Interludes: 1The Rising of a Dark Star
by Hardwing
Summary: The Interludes are fics which play between the main fics. Since I can not write all the stuff I want to in one fic without destroying the tension I decided to make these if I want to. See here some little secrets of Lucifia....
1. The arriving of the Shadows

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I just want to thank the creators of DARK AGES for creating such a great background and Storyseeker for correcting my fics and helping me with great ideas.

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Interlude1: The Rising of a Dark Star

Somewhere somewhen

"Yes, maybe," a voice said, a voice she knew as well as her own, a voice she had heard and loved all her life, the voice of the person who had killed her... her mother's voice.

~ It is funny ~ Lucifia thought while she drifted in the darkness, which surrounded her. ~ I never thought it would come to one of these flashbacks? ~

And as if it would have waited on this, it began.... 

The first thing she saw and felt was warmth and narrowness, in darkness, with just with the sound of her own heart around her. But all this wasn't unpleasant, but comforting and peaceful. This ended when the shell of her world shattered and the incoming light, scandalously bright for her relations, dazzled her. Being angry and shocked of the bright light and the cold vicinity, she screamed out her misery, just to be calmly taken up by two strong and soft arms. 

Being softly and safely held by someone, who cuddled her in their arms, her eyes slowly adapted to the surrounding luminous intensity, and she saw who held her. It was a gargess with hair as red as blood, even though the just hatched hatchling didn't know what blood was, her tiara shined golden and her eyes shined emerald-green, full of happiness and love. Aside hers was another face, which was one of a large eagle it seemed, with large brown eyes who even so looked down on her with love. 

The hatchling gulped happily by the love she felt and snuggled herself in the warm arms.

~ Yes, yes ~ Lucifia thought since somehow she couldn't speak. ~ Might we fasten this up a bit, I have no time to go through all this again! ~

She didn't know to whom she spoke, but it somehow seemed to listen since her life went over faster before her eyes.... Well it wasn't like TV, more like living all this again, fully detailed but faster.

How she crawled, how she made her first steps...

Her first unintentional try in gliding, how she fell to what she thought was her assure death and as much as she tried, her wings wouldn't carry her and how her mother's arms saved her.

"I will always be there to catch you." Her mother promised and she knew with the heart of a hatchling that she would hold the promise.

And it went further...

The wonderful nights of playing with her siblings.

The elders telling them stories of the clan and the second telling them of her journeys until the morning.

The long hours of training her battle skills by the teacher. 

The night that the second offered them training in shamanism and she herself started to learn magic.

The night of the Ascending, when she had killed the boar just to satisfy the teacher.

And slowly the living-movie came to it, the turning point in her life and she let it go slower, just to see....

****

08.06.1675; 20:52; The plain of the clan:

Little Panther landed gracefully on the plain like so many times before, it was just that this night she did it especially gracefully since she felt... great. It was the night when they would bind the guardian spirit anew on this plain and when they would do so, it would be accompanied by a large celebration in the clan, anew to make their clan save.

And she would contribute to this!

She had finally discovered a Tear of Naliko growing on one side of a waterfall and carefully cut off the blossom from the plant to let it live and make more blossoms perhaps. These plants were rare, like the elders said even before the whites came, since the healing powers of it made it desired not just by their Shamans, but by many animals. But since the whites had arrived, their men searched the woods for this blossom too, not because of their healing powers; the humans had no idea of it, but to sell them on markets as decoration for their women.

So the blossom had become even rarer and so much more precious for her clan. Besides that it was a critical component in the ritual to bind the guardian spirit, it served the shamans as strong medicine against various illnesses and for various other cases. 

How it should be used would be decided by the leader and the second, either if it would be dried, held fresh or pressed out to use the juice. Little Panther felt the weight of the blossom in the bag on her belt and smiled, the stock of these blossoms wouldn't go out so soon.

Smiling, she came to the large fire burning in the middle of the clan's life, which burned due to mark the gathering point of the clan and to warm the elders who were gathered here to tell the hatchlings stories of how they had done so many times before. 

Once, maybe a week ago, when she and her brother had to guard the hatchlings down at the lake deeper in the woods, she had heard two of them talking about how great it would be to not be the youngest generation anymore. Little Panther and Wolf had just looked at each other with a not so hidden smile. These youngsters had still so much to learn!

At the fire, there weren't just the eldest and youngest generations gathered, but even so her other rookery siblings who were chatting amongst themselves, seemingly waiting on someone. 

That someone turned out to be her.

"Greetings sister, we waited on you!" exclaimed one sister. She had the appearance of a wolf with a white coat and her guardian was the Ghost Owl.

"Yes, did you forget?" A male, with the appearance of a bear, said whose guardian was a muskrat and who had to face many good hearted jokes because of that. "We wanted to bathe in the lake tonight before the celebration starts, our sister will come when her guard duty has ended."

Little Panther bit her lip, she had indeed forgotten this.

"Sorry, first I have to bring the leader something," she saw how the happiness in her sibling's eyes dimmed, "but if he allows it then I will return fast and meet you at the lake." 

Wolf approached her and laid a claw on her shoulder.

"That will be nice," he explained. "I will wait here."

Little Panther felt the skin on her dark blue cheek become slightly red.

"Thank you." she said and looked into her brother's eyes.

They first registered that they were looking on each other for too long when they heard their siblings murmuring and looking on them, slightly gloating.

"I must go." Little Panther said even more embarrassed, turned around and went to the leaders cave, leaving Wolf alone with his siblings. 

"Ahhh." his white haired wolf-looking sister went into raptures. "I can see you both on your mating flight already!"

Wolf just looked on his sister angrily while she smiled one of her famous wolf's-grin. 

"I think we should go now." The brother with the appearance of a buffalo said while laying a claw on his sister's shoulder. He was often silent and always thought before he acted. A calm soul, which made him in the eyes of many clan elders the best candidate of leadership in his generation... Unfortunately he had no talent in shamanism and only a shaman could lead.

Little Panther meanwhile approached the cave, her cheeks still a bit red.

~ Why can't they let this be a thing between us two? ~ She thought, but guessed that it was natural for rookery siblings to interfere in everything. 

Sighing, she took the blossom out of her bag and studied it. It was of a dark blue shade around a purple centre, which seemed to burn. Little Panther smelled on it and felt at once more vivid. 

"....The leader was forced to choose a new second by the elders since it had been three years without one." She heard her moth... the second saying and stopped.

~ They are talking about the new second ~ Little Panther realized.

She had heard the elders talking that Shaman wouldn't be leader for long anymore and that the teacher would take this place and the next second would be... well, either she or her brother.

Curiously, she sneaked to the entrance of the cave and eavesdropped.

"....Remember, the best way to mature is to have responsibility." 

Shaman said and in this moment Little Panther couldn't get the idea out of her mind that he was indeed her father.

"I will choose the second in the next months when the clan has gotten used to me as leader." The second explained and so confirmed her daughter's suspicion. "Even though I already know whom I will choose."

"Who?" Shaman asked.

Little Panther's heart stopped beating. 

"The lad." the second answered.

Little Panther's heart turned to ice, as her dreams of her future smashed.

"Why him and not Little Panther?" Shaman asked and if Little Panther would have been more concentrated on this, she would have noticed a slight disapproving tone.

"Little Panther is, in my eyes, too unsure." The second explained. "She is back in her warrior lessons and the learning of magic and even her skills in the art of shamanism are a bit backward compared to her brothers. Often she is diverted during the training and she is much too less eager in this... she wouldn't make a good second."

Little Panther let the blossom fall on the earth since she didn't feel her claw anymore, all she felt was her cracking heart. She ran away, tears streaming down her face.

Finally, unaware that she had headed there, she had reached the silent place, which was distant of the vivid clan-life where she had spent many of her rare free hours, while she had spent the other hours training in either her warrior and reading skills, her mastery of magic and the art of shamanism... and she had failed in all.

Little Panther allowed herself to fall into the grass and buried her face in it.

~ I have tried it ~ she defended herself against the voice of her mother in her head. ~ I worked twice as much as the others and I failed. ~

She felt more useless now than her teacher's criticism had ever let her feel during the hours of training her warrior skills and simply knew that she was the most useless and incompetent gargoyle of the clan... of the whole world!

But she had done everything she was capable of. 

~ She is back in learning magic. ~ 

She had heeded the instructions she had got in magic by the second twice a week and had even read in the magic books of the second, studying her spells in some of her rare hours of freedom, but the most were in Latin, so that she had to even learn a second new language besides English.

~ She is back in learning shamanism. ~ 

Yes, maybe she wasn't so good in shamanism like her brother, but just because always when she listened to the teachings of Shaman or the second, she had to think on magic!

~ She is back in her warrior skills. ~

But she had tried! It was just that through all this learning of shamanism and magic, she hadn't got out as much as her siblings and what they had learned in games, she had to learn twice as hard in the hours of practicing.

Her mother's words just told her what she had already known since years, that she didn't manage to come through with all her tasks, that it was too much work for her. But this was what the second had told her from the beginning. It was just that she hadn't realized it.

"If I just..." Little Panther whispered, but didn't come any further. Instead she sat up and looked up to the moon.

~ The second wouldn't fail in this ~ she thought ~ she would do even more without any problems. ~

But she simply couldn't, as she had failed the second and so wasn't worthy to...

"Little Panther?" a soft voice behind her asked.

Little Panther turned around and saw Wolf standing behind her, the Tear of Naliko in his claw. 

"You lost this." he said and gave her the blossom, sitting beside her. 

He had grown tired of waiting on her and went to the cave. There he had discovered the precious blossom lying on the earth and his more precious sister missing and since he knew the place she liked to go.

"Thank you." Little Panther said tonelessly and turned to the moon, away from her brother sitting beside her, so as to not let him see her dried tears. 

She looked on the moon, smelling absently on the blossom before placing it in her bag before looking to her brother, speechlessly. He stood in the second's favor and would become second and surely one day even leader, yet she couldn't be jealous on him, as much as she tried.

Wolf had indeed seen the dried tears on his sister's face and was going to ask her why she had cried, but before he could do so, the moonlight shone on her, brightening her slightly red face and Wolf had to control himself to not gasp. 

~ She looks so beautiful ~ he thought.

Sure, he had noticed this long before, but now in this moment, he knew she was the most beautiful gargoyle in the world. Wolf couldn't say anything, but touched, nearly against his will, Little Panther's black hair and stroked it. 

Little Panther smiled.

"Aren't you risking giving our siblings more to talk about?" she asked with a slight smile.

"Let them..." he said hard and added softer. "They speak the truth, I... I love you. Mine heart belongs to you."

Little Panther just stared on him and for one moment, Wolf feared that she would laugh about him. These fears proved unfounded when Little Panther took him by his coat and embraced him strongly, placing her leather wings over his shoulders like she had seen it by the elders.

He did the same with his feathered wings and such they were embraced, feeling strong and protected like they had never felt before. 

This was the moment when her mother chose to jump before them.

****

Somewhere somewhen

~ Yes mother, you always had nice timing ~ Lucifia thought while she or her ghost floated in the darkness. ~ But after father's death you got me and my love to at least survive. ~ 

Yet, despite the sarcasm of her thoughts, a small part of herself felt the longing after the warm embrace of her love, but Lucifia rejected this at once.

~Love!?~ she thought ~I won't tolerate such weakness!~

While she thought so, she once again felt herself at the time so long ago.

****

08.06.1675; 22:04; a cave in the woods:

This night, after all what Little Panther had thought might happen as bad, the worst thing had happened.

First she had learned what her mother truly thought of her, now Shaman laid dead before them, and her mother actually told them that she was going to face these men.

"I know this is hard for you, but believe me, I am proud of you and my mate would be too." She declared to them and Little Panther tried hard not to show what she felt. She KNEW how her mother truly felt about her. "Follow my orders. I know you can handle it and don't fear, I'll be back to perform the ritual... the clan will be safe."

With this, their second turned her back on them and stormed out of the cave, to fight a fight nobody believed she was able to win.

Little Panther laid herself back in the warm coat of her brother... of her love. He circled his feathered wings around her, stroking her hair while he listened to the night outside the cave. 

There was a scream, like that of a big cat followed by the horrified screams of a human, which died quickly, surely with his owner.

"There it is!" A voice screamed. "Follow her, don't let her escape!" 

The gargoyle youngster listened to the footsteps of many persons running away quickly and then... silence. An unearthly silence seemed to rule outside, in which nothing seemed to move.

Finally, after minutes which seemed like an endless time period for them, Wolf decided to make the move. He removed himself from Little Panther and slowly took a look outside.

"All quiet." he whispered. "Come, before they come back."

Little Panther nodded, threw a last look on Shaman and then followed her love outside.

It was maybe the longest trip they had ever made in their young lives. They knew this area, not as well as the unsettled parts of the forest, but well enough. It was just that now, everything seemed darker and definitely more dangerous. Behind every tree might lay an attacker, ready to shoot with a bow and so they sneaked carefully on all fours to be no visible prey. 

When they had finally reached the plain, by taking a large detour around the traitor Michael's house, they climbed on it again very carefully, but definitely quicker, and started to breathe again when they reached the secure plain, where they knew that they were safe. 

Wolf-sister, who had returned from the lake, had fulfilled her duty to guard this part of the plain. A boring job indeed since no one had ever tried to attack them... Well, until this accident some years before, but the guardian spirit had saved the clan and so proofed the uselessness of any patrol.

So Ghost Owl was busy in looking at the sky and thinking, her head propped on a spear, of the celebration starting when the leader and the second, together with her siblings would return then to actually care for the surroundings. 

So she was startled to see Wolf climbing up the plain, followed by his sister.

"Brother, Sister what is wrong?" Ghost Owl asked teasingly. "Forgotten how to glide?"

The look her brother gave her and the pained expression she saw in Little Panther's eyes made her smile collapse.

"What has happened?" she asked, now holding her spear in a defensive stance, as if she feared to be attacked in the next few seconds "Where are Shaman and the second?"

Little Panther turned her face away, looking into the woods and trying to hide the swelling tears, so Wolf answered.

"Sister, go to the clan and tell them that we have to make an assembly." he told her. "At once!"

Ghost Owl had more questions, but the look in her brother's eyes, together with the tone she knew from the second, made her follow his orders and ran quickly to the center of the plain.

Wolf looked around to Little Panther, who seemed to search the forest with her eyes for any sign of the second.

"Come, we have to report to the clan what has happened and must decide what to do now." Wolf urged her, laying a claw on her shoulder. 

"You can do this." Little Panther replied. "I want to stay here, just a bit longer so...." 

Wolf shook his head.

"She won't come so soon, even if all has come as she had planned it," he told her and looked deep into her eyes. "Now we have the duty to act how she taught it to us... how they both taught us. We won't disappoint her."

Little Panther returned the look and finally she nodded, following her brother to the centre of the plain.

~ But I have already disappointed her ~ she thought desperately.

****

08.06.1675; 23:01; the fireplace in the centre of the plain:

Little Panther and Wolf came side by side to the centre where seemingly the whole clan was gathered, now looking on the returning youngster sternly.

"Why have you gathered us here?" A female elder with the appearance of a falcon asked. "And where are the leader and the second?"

"We have been attacked. The second lead our attackers away from us, deeper into the woods, so that we could escape." Wolf explained calmly. "And the leader is dead."

The murmur, which started on this, was horrible as seemingly all clan members spoke at once to each other. Some had white or red eyes, others looked rather afraid and some confused. It was the elder of Shaman's generation with the appearance of a bear with, due to his age, mostly a grey coat who brought the order back.

"Brothers, Sisters, be quiet!" The one who was called Elk demanded loudly. "I think we should first hear the whole story before we decide what to do." 

He gave the shaman-apprentice a stern look, showing them that it was their turn now. Since Little Panther looked as though she was in deep thought, more down in the woods than by them, Wolf took the initiative.

Wolf went to the middle of the gathering and started to tell the elders of everything what had happened after they had left the plain. Many minutes later he ended the report with how they had reached the plain and looked around to his clan, who looked on him in silence.

"This ungrateful lot!" a female warrior with the appearance of a black panther snarled angrily, her eyes blood red. "Such they repay our clan's help!"

"We should go into the town and teach them a lesson!" a male elder suggested. "Let we pay them blood with blood!"

Agreeing murmurs came from the clan and Wolf noticed that even Little Panther was looking on the elder now with all her interest, but again the elder with the appearance of a bear calmed them down.

"This isn't the time for this! The orders of the second..." he hesitated shortly and corrected himself, "…of the leader were clear that we do nothing until she is back. Besides, the humans will just wait on an attack and make a trap."

"Then we should help the second!" Little Panther demanded desperately from the elder. "If we sent a patrol to the woods then we might be able to overthrow them." 

"And what if she has already escaped them?" Elk replied. "What if she is on the way back and the patrol we send goes into a trap laid by the humans, for her? Does anybody want to tell her later that we lost one because we didn't follow her order?"

"If she still lives." a voice said.

Little Panther looked to the owner of this voice, even when she recognized at once where it came from. It was an elder, three generations above Shaman's and Elk's generation, with the appearance of a raven. Her once black feathers had become completely white-grey and she walked with the help of a stick, but her grey eyes were signs for her still sharp intelligence. 

She had been against making Demona the second, despite that she was the only other shaman available. Indeed she had not voted against her in the council, but just because she was strict for the unity of the clan... what was left of it was she used to say, since she was now one of the minorities, who still remembered the break up of the clan so many years before.

"Based on what the young warriors told us, the humans following her were superior about her," she pointed out. "And due to that, she is so heavily wounded that we don't know if she has been able to escape them."

"SHE IS IMMORTAL!!!" Little Panther screamed on her with slightly red eyes, forgetting for one moment the respect she should have for an elder. "She can survive anything!"

The elder looked on Little Panther with a mix of false pity and arrogance.

"Maybe she is, but what if the one who led the humans was the Macbeth she told us about?" she asked. "Or what if they kill her temporary, but behead her and take her head back as a trophy with them?"

Little Panther stared on the elder, her anger changed to panic. 

~ What if this has truly happened? ~ She thought about the head of her mother placed on a lance and shuddered. ~ No, she won't.... ~

"I don't think this is the time to make wild theories." the bear-looking elder said. "Neither do we have proof that it is Macbeth who hunts her, nor do we know if they have captured her."

"Then we should have someone sneak down into the town and eavesdrop on the humans." an eagle-like warrior suggested. "They surely will know what has happened to our sister."

Agreeing murmurs came from the mass of the clan and Elk sighed.

"Very well then." he replied. "You and you," he pointed to two female warriors, "will sneak to the town and hear what they have to say. Meanwhile, we must guard our home from possible further attacks, so the half of our active warriors will patrol at the border of the plain, the rest will guard the hatchlings and the rookery until the day. We must be careful now, since the humans might use our confusion to start an attack during the night."

"What about the ritual?" A lizard-like gargess asked, her split tongue hissing a bit. "The apprentices haven't ascended yet and we need someone to perform the ritual in three nights."

"I know," Elk, who seemed to growl slowly to the respected gargoyle, said. "But we will talk about this tomorrow night.... If the leader hasn't appeared until then," he looked around the clan. "You all know what to do, now do your duty and believe me the clan will survive this like it has survived everything before."

The murmurs responding this from the dissolving assembly were not really optimistic, but at least not fearful.

~ At least something, ~ Elk thought and eyed the Wolf and little Panther, who went to their siblings. 

****

09.06.1675; 01:44; the human town:

Five men stood guard in the middle of the town, looking fearfully at the sky from which they feared the demons would come to hunt them for what they had done. But there came nothing that they had to warn their families about, so they kept silent until they heard the sound of hooves coming nearer.

When they looked in the direction of the sound they saw the man, who called himself *The Hunter* and whom they had hired to expel the demons, coming back with the men of the town who had gone with him for the hunt.

The hunt had appeared to have failed, not just that the men were carrying the corpse of one man, who seemingly was killed by the demons. That was two deaths together with the losses at the beginning of the hunt and they could see just two of the Hunter's dogs left.

"What happened?" John asked. "Have you killed them?"

"I killed the Demon I wanted." the Hunter explained, studying the man in front of him uninterested. "But she fell in the river. I will follow its flow to get her corpse down it." 

The men around John looked in panic on the Hunter, like on their friends who bowed their heads in respect of the corpse of the man with the open chest.

"And the others?!" John asked, his fair hair falling in his face. "We ordered you to kill them all!"

The Hunter's look grew icy, as he wasn't interested in the others. Since he had heard of the Demon, the queen of her damned race hiding here, his only goal had been to slay her.

"I have wounded the other, the old one..." he told them shortly. "I believe 'Shaman' is how you called him. He will be dead by now."

"But the others will take revenge! You let the two younger demons escape." another timid resident, who had taken part in the hunt, noted. "The gargoyles on the plain will come down and kill us all when they learn of this!"

~ Naturally they will do so, you idiot. ~ The Hunter thought. ~ They will do this or worse. ~

The first time when he had come to this town, a week ago, he had studied the area and learned where the demons lived. He knew that he had sentenced the town with all its residents to death. He had learned from the people living here that the demons were protected by some sort of ghost on the plain and that the corpses of some adventurers from outside, who had climbed on the plain to smash the clan during the day; were handed back to them in a state they didn't want to describe.

The Hunter had guessed that the demons were protected by some sort of spell, surely made by their queen, even when the people told him that the demons had some sort of power even before she arrived. This had shown to be the greatest problem in his planning since he couldn't be sure that all gargoyles would be killed. Finally, he had decided to make a trap just for the Demon to kill her and her companions, knowing very well how the other demons would react on this. 

He looked around in the faces of the humans he knew he had sentenced to death.

They were farmers mainly. Strong, but not trained in any sort of fight, judging by what he had seen in the hunt just now. Since these people had problems fighting four gargoyles... Well three, not counting the one he had wounded first, they wouldn't have a chance against the whole clan, who were sure to come down from the plain to take revenge for their clan member's deaths. 

The Hunter knew all this, yet he replied. "No they won't." he lied. "Trust me, I know these demons."

He looked around in the faces of the men, who showed respect since he had killed two of the beasts, respect which overthrew their mistrust.

The Hunter knew that leaving these men to their deaths by the demons' hand wasn't a good death, but he couldn't risk loosing his trophy, which had maybe drifted down the river not so far away as he feared. Later he would come back with more, better trained men to besiege the plain and kill the other demons, but he doubted that anyone, man, woman or child, would live this time.

"Well, I...." The Hunter started, when his dogs started barking like mad, growling in one direction.

The Hunter looked quickly in this direction, seeing two eye pairs vanishing quickly. 

~ They are faster than I thought, ~ he noticed slowly. 

"Nathan, Rex, out!" he ordered the dogs who followed his orders at once. They were good animals and he was happy that he had held them back from the hunt, as they would serve him well by finding the demon's corpse.

"What is it?" a man asked. "Why did they bark so?"

The Hunter looked back to the man, as they were seemingly unaware of what he had seen, which proofed once more their incapability in fight against the demons.

"The wind is unfavorable and bears the scent of the demons up on the plain." The Hunter lied. "They are trained to react on such."

Not one of the men around him noticed that the wind was indeed blowing from the opposite direction to the plain, which gave the Hunter the last proof he needed to know that these men were complete idiots.

He was just going to bring his horse to turn around and ride away, when he heard a voice calling.

"What is all this noise!" an angry voice demanded and when the men looked in the direction of the voice, they saw the preacher coming fast out of the church, still in his robe.

The Hunter's eyes became smaller. He knew that this man was smarter than the others and would surely not believe his lie.

"You have returned and seemingly your hunt has failed!" the preacher noticed. "Like I said! You fought without the help of God, so you had to fail!!!"

The Hunter stared down on the preacher from his horse. 

"And I told you that crosses and bibles won't help against them either, just sword and guns like your people might confirm to you." the Hunter repeated. "I learned so long ago and two more of the demons died tonight through this. The one your men called the Shaman and... the red-haired beast."

The preacher's eyes widened, but the rest of his face stayed skeptical. 

~ Good ~ the Hunter thought.

Then he led his horse slowly away from the men, following the way he knew that would lead him to his prey. Unfortunately, the preacher proofed to be stubborn and went aside his horse. 

"Your words are blasphemy!" he accused him. "If you don't trust in God then you are no better than those monsters!"

The Hunter had his gun aiming on the preacher's forehead faster than anyone could react.

"Listen preacher, and listen well." The Hunter snarled, "God has allowed these creatures to exist on this earth and to threaten us all. I will correct this. If **you** call this blasphemy then do so, **I** call it correction of his failures."

With this, he ordered his horse to gallop away, followed by his dogs, not throwing one look back on the men staring at him.

~ You have sentenced them to death ~ the Hunter reminded himself again, but then shook his head, as they had no priority, the demon-queen had.

He, Duncan Canmore, would bring her head back as a trophy to Scotland, like he had promised it to John.

****

09.06.1675; 03:13; the shaman's cave on the plain:

Wolf and Little Panther looked around in the cave of the shaman, reserved for the clan leader. But the clan leader was dead and his successor's fate was unknown and somehow, Little Panther believed that she could feel it here, as if a part of the cave itself was missing.

~ You fool yourself ~ Little Panther said, ~ the second would say even so. ~

But she didn't fool herself of why she and her brother were here.

They had made the patrol on the borders of the plain, together with the half of the clan, checking the night for possible attacks following the first one. The other clan members had offered them a break, considering what they had been through this night, but both had refused, both felt the urge to protect their clan, besides they were too upset to sit around. 

This was until the bear-like elder, who seemed to have grown in the role as a gargoyle in command, came to them and ordered them to wait in the cave of the shaman for them. 

This had been some minutes ago and not one of them had spoken one word while they waited on the elder, who said he still had one other thing to do, this could only mean...

"My children," Elk's voice told them and Wolf and Little Panther turned their heads around to see their clan-father standing in the entrance of the cave. "Please sit down." 

Both of them obeyed and sat down, not taking their eyes from the elder.

"Listen, our spies have returned." he told them directly. "They reported to me that the Hunter and his men, one of them dead, have returned to the village."

Little Panther felt her heart beating faster and she grabbed the claw of her love. She knew she was thinking like a hatchling, but deep down she had hoped that her mother would beat the Hunter and his men like she had done in her stories so many times before and would return to the plain unharmed with her attackers' dead bodies as trophies. Now it had turned out that these were silly dreams.

"What has happened to my..." *...mother?* she was going to say, but bit herself on the lips just before this, "…our leader?"

"The Hunter hasn't captured her," Elk calmed his children down, "but seemingly he believed to have killed her and they saw her fall in the river where she drifted away."

Little Panther looked on the elder shocked while Wolf took initiative.

"Then we have to organize groups to search the river for her." he suggested, but Elk shook his head.

"No," he replied. "I considered this briefly, but the Hunter is out there, following the path of the river and seemingly searching our leader's corpse... Apparently the Canmores haven't learned that she is completely immortal for them yet."

"So we can do nothing, but pray to the Great Spirit that she will come back to us?" Little Panther asked shocked. "That she is not discovered by the Hunter still dead and taken as a trophy?"

Elk shook his head.

"No, there is more we can do.... or better yet, what we have to do." he corrected himself and looked on both young warriors hard. "We can't just hope that our leader comes back in time to make the ritual, we have to consider that she won't come back, at least not in time."

There was a moment of silence. 

"You want us to make the ritual." Little Panther noticed.

Elk nodded.

"One of you yes." he explained. 

"But none of us has ascended to a full shaman yet." Wolf protested. "And it is necessary that always one older shaman supervises the ritual."

"We can't take care of this now." Elk explained irritated. "The clan is in danger, we don't know if and when the humans will attack again and considering what has happened tonight, we can't rely on that everything will go well." He looked hard on both young warriors and shamans in apprentice. "In some minutes, I will call the clan together to report what the spies have learned and I want to have something to calm them down, to show them that we are still secure here and for such I need your help, despite the rules."

Little Panther and Wolf looked on the elder, a bit surprised, as it wasn't his way to say something so rough. This showed them just how hard it truly was for him to hold the burden of leadership and how much he feared for their safety.

"We will wait until next midnight, then one of you will ascend and do the ritual the next night, can you do that?" Elk asked with a hint of desperation in his voice, just enough to let the youngster feel it.

Little Panther looked at the elder. This was it and she knew it, this was her opportunity to show not just her mother, but her whole clan her worthiness. Then she looked on her brother and love, he was the one her mother would have chosen, he was the one who should make the ritual and she should say this, but she couldn't.

"I will do it." she told Elk, not looking on Wolf by this. "I will ascend and do the ritual. I have seen the Leader and the second often enough doing it and they explained to us every part of it, exactly."

Little Panther couldn't let him rob her of her one chance to become the next second and she knew she would be second when her mother would come back and see that _she_ had made the ritual, that her daughter had maybe rescued the clan even when she hadn't believed in that she would be capable of that. Her mother would be proud of her.

Elk studied her for one moment longer seriously, and then he looked to Wolf who nodded slightly after a short break.

"Well then, so be it," he confirmed. "I will go and gather the clan at the fire, please be there soon." 

With this, he turned around and left the cave.

Little Panther looked on Wolf, who studied her with a sort of doubt in his eyes which she could feel more than she could see.

"What is it?" Little Panther asked tensed.

Wolf bit his lip, even when he would never say it to Little Panther; he knew that he was better in shamanism than his love. Maybe not much and he was sure that she would be equal to him if she would have had more time, but he was better and he believed she knew it.

"Nothing." he lied and shook his head. "It is just that being shaman... and later even second will be a burden. You know this?"

Little Panther nodded, yet she knew what he truly wanted to say, that she maybe couldn't handle it.

"I know, but together." she softly stroked his snout, "we will come through."

Wolf smiled and hugged her.

****

09.06.1675; 21:13; the border of the plain:

The gargress, who would one day be known as Lucifia, and her rookery generation stood around at the rocky part of the plain that they used as a meeting point for their generation. In the years before, they did so to have fun, undisturbed by their younger siblings or the elders, now they talked about more serious matters.

"I wish they would attack." Ghost Owl snarled, her eyes blazing red, and pushed the blade of her sword into the earth. "I would like to let them pay for what they did to our leader!"

"And what then?" her buffalo-like brother, with the guardian of a fox, asked. "You know we depend on their food to support the clan."

"But what she says is the truth." one of their brothers, a male with short brown hair and a dark golden skin, responded "We can't let them get away with this so easily!"

"This isn't what our teacher had said." Wolf said. "She just ordered us to do nothing until she returned. I might imagine that she will indeed punish the humans for what they did. Great Panther, she definitely will not get over the death of her mate and leader so easily."

"Maybe the one who rules the clan meanwhile could do something even while she is away." This came from the sister with white skin and long white hair, bounded to a long plot nearly all the way down her back. "We shouldn't give them more time to prepare themselves, or to let the one directly responsible escape."

Wolf shook his head.

"The elder won't do this." he argued. "He is much too careful... he has lost two of his siblings by the humans already, remember?"

"I didn't mean him, but our sister." White Star, who was called so for obvious reasons despite her guardian spirit, said as she looked to Little Panther. "If you...." she bit her lip and corrected herself fast, seeing the slightly pained look in her sister's green eyes. "_When_ you ascend, you will be the only shaman available, which means that you will be the leader."

Before Little Panther could say something, Wolf took the word.

"No, Elk is leading the clan and he will do so until our teacher returns." he replied. "Little Panther... no one of our generation has enough experience to lead."

"But he is no shaman." White Star pointed out. "How can anybody lead a clan without the help of the spirits?"

"The teacher told us stories about the clans in Europe... all over the world and that they had no shamans as leaders and mostly don't even know what shamans are." the brown haired brother said. "So it should be possible to lead the clan even without the help of the spirits for a while."

"You forgot that she even told us so that the clans in Europe are mostly extinguished." Ghost Owl retorted, crossing her arms. "I don't want this to happen to our clan too."

"We don't even know how long the teacher will be absent." the buffalo-like brother noted in his usual calm manner. "Maybe she will even return before our sister ascends, so talking about her successor is much too early."

"By the way, I have to prepare for the ascending." Little Panther explained. "I'll see you later at the ceremony?" 

Wolf nodded and gave her a soft, personal smile.

"We will all be there." he explained, accompanied by the agreeing murmurs of their other siblings. For some reason, they hadn't told them about their new relationship, which was so much different from a simple brother-sister relationship.

Little Panther smiled and left. 

With secure steps, she went to the centre of the plain where one of the elders, a wolf-like female elder with a grey coat, was just ending a story she was telling to the 17 year old hatchlings. 

When she arrived there, the hatchlings noticed her and ran to her at once.

"Sister... "a male hatchling with the appearance of a hawk, whose feathers were white around his head, and with brown shining eyes.

"Sister, have you heard of the second?" a female hatchling with purple skin and ash-grey hair asked.

"Will you be the next second?" a male hatchling with the appearance of a crow asked.

"The second will come back," a male voice asked fearfully, "won't she?"

"Is..." another hatchling started, but Little Panther stopped them.

"Little brothers and sisters; please be quiet." she told them calmly. "I will answer your questions as well as I can."

On this, dozens of curious and fearful eyes looked on her and Little Panther started to feel the weight of them, the weight of the hatchlings whose world had been shaken if not destroyed. 

"Yes I will ascend tonight and become a full shaman to bind the guardian on the next night." she explained to them. "This is necessary to protect the clan."

"But shouldn't the second to this?" Little Raccoon, a male hatchling with light-brown skin, fair hair and a beak said. 

"She is missing." one of his sisters said, since she felt her brother had asked something foolish. "You know this."

"The Hunter has taken her as a trophy and has killed her like he did with the leader." another whispered depressed, just loud enough that Little Panther could hear her. "She will never come back."

"**NO!**" Little Panther nearly screamed and on the look of the elder she added calmer. "The elders have told you that we don't know this. The second might return even tonight, we just have to have trust in her... It is like in one of her stories she has told you. The Hunters could never defeat her and they never will, believe me."

She looked around in the faces of the mostly scared hatchlings. They remembered the stories of the second very well, of her fights and adventures and maybe it was just one further adventure... but the adventure didn't taste like one they had heard of, it seemed dark and dangerous and the hatchlings didn't want anything else then that the second would come back and tell them stories.

"I know that the second will come back and take her place as leader." Little Panther promised them, remembering what Wolf had said to her. "But until then we have to do as she would have wanted, this means that I will make the ritual and you will listen to the elders.... this way, we all will make her proud."

She saw some hatchlings nodding obediently and smiled. They didn't look happy, but at least they didn't seem so depressed and scared anymore. 

"I have to go now and prepare myself for the ascension." Little Panther said. "I hope I see you there."

On this came agreeing murmurs from the mass of hatchlings and Little Panther forced herself to smile.

"Until then."

With this, she turned around and went up to the cave. 

  
Arriving at the entrance of the cave, Little Panther could hear that some of the elders, who had apparently taken the swords for the ceremony from there, and thinking that it might be a good idea to know what they were speaking about, she hid in the shadows before the entrance, listening strained. 

"... Will Wise Snake and Old Weasel be the other guards." a voice said that Little Panther recognized as the elder Grey Wolf, one of the eldest warriors of the clan.

  
"Good, I know they can handle it," another voice, which she recognized as Bear's said, "if necessary."

There was a longer silence and Little Panther thought about going in now, but then Grey Wolf's voice continued.

"I don't even want to think about it." he replied. 

"I too, but we have to for the clan's sake." Elk informed him and Little Panther felt that he was going to say more, but a third voice, which she recognized as the raven-like, grey-feathered elder whom she disliked very much.

"She shouldn't even make the ascension!" she pointed out. "Our son should."

Little Panther clenched her fists and had to suppress a growl, but wasn't surprised. Somehow this elder had never liked her... or the ones looking European/German for that, but her especially, even when she never shown it too openly. 

~ Maybe because she knows who my mother is? ~ Little Panther thought for the first time.

"We have spoken about this," Grey Wolf replied. "She wanted it so, so we have to trust her." 

There was a short silence in which Little Panther believed to feel how the elder shook her beaked head.

"I don't think that the survival of the clan is something we should play games with." the old raven said. "And we all know that **he** would be the better shaman."

There was a longer silence now and Little Panther prayed to all spirits that at least one would contradict... no one did.

"She will do it." Grey Wolf set against this, but it didn't sound very convinced.

"But what if she does not?" the old raven asked. "What if she fails and comes back without being a full shaman or worse, becoming such a... a thing that we have heard of? Can you answer me that?" 

There was a longer silence.

"Then our son will take her place." Elk said finally, trying to hide his sadness of having to think on this. "True, it may be hard for him, but he can do it if necessary... I know."

Little Panther felt as if someone had punched her heavily in the stomach and wanted to vomit... They didn't believe that she would manage to ascend and they were actually even planning to make her love her successor!!!

She tried to sort her feelings, she wasn't sad or angry like maybe she should be, but just simply beaten.

When she had regained at least a bit of her strength, she walked into the cave trying to smile.

"Elders." she greeted them respectfully, noticing at least Grey Wolf and Elk wincing a bit.

"Child," Grey Wolf started, not knowing what to say and unsure of how much she had heard. 

"I see you came to take the swords?" Little Panther asked, pointing to the Angel-Swords in his claws.

Elk nodded.

"Indeed, even when we know that we won't need them." he explained what Little Panther knew was a lie. "I think it is better to leave you alone now... I'll send your brother to take you when it is time."

Little Panther nodded and studied how the elders left the cave and after even the old raven with her stick, who gave her a somewhat estimated look when she was at the entrance, had left, Little Panther collapsed on the bed.

She didn't cry, even when she first thought she had to. She simply looked on the ceiling of the cave, trying not to let the desperation overwhelm her.


	2. The Downfall

****

10.06.1675; 00:13; the shaman's cave:

Little Panther sat on her parent's bed, smelling the well known scent and reading the magic book, one of the easy Grimores that her mother had somehow become owner of. It was not one of the large magic books that her mother had often explained about, nothing like the Grimorum Arcanorum, but it had some illusion spells and minor tricks in it, so it was the best for a beginner in magic to learn in.

Little Panther came to the last page, originally just empty space, but her mother had written down some spells she knew out of her memory, 'Fulmeos Venite,' as an example.

Maybe she should go through what she knew about shamanism again, but Little Panther knew that she would rather forget something on this way than rather learn something she maybe didn't know.

"My love?" she heard a voice calling her and when she looked up, she saw Wolf standing at the entrance of the cave looking seriously on her. "It is time." 

Little Panther tried to give him a smile, but failed miserably and to hide this, she put the book back in the shelves.

"Seemingly." she responded and took the bag with the dried leaves, made to powder, she would use for the ritual.

"Don't fear." Wolf replied, now with a soft smile, touching her shoulder. "I know you will make it."

"Thank you." she replied, now with true happiness in her voice. "What would I do without you?"

"Come, we have to go." Wolf said. "They already wait on us."

Little Panther nodded and side by side they went down the way to the centre of the plain where nearly the whole clan was gathered.

~ This should be a happy celebration ~ Little Panther thought; ~ every ascension has been, according to the elders, to strengthen the spirit of the apprentice and to show him or her for what they fought. ~ 

But there was no celebration, nobody laughed, nobody danced. Sure, it was mainly due to the fact that the leader had died not so long ago and had not yet to get a farewell and that the second was missing... No, no one wanted to celebrate now, but somehow Little Panther couldn't banish the thought that they didn't celebrate because they all, even the hatchlings, knew that she would fail.

She passed down the way, looking in some of the faces around her, the most looking hopeful and smiling, but some serious and Little Panther could feel how they studied her, thought about if she would be able to manage what she had to do.

Finally, she and Wolf came to the place where the tent had been set up. It was a large tent with ceremonial paintings on it of spirits and signs. Smoke came out of the hole at the top, showing that they had already started the fire.

Their siblings were already waiting there.

"Sister, I know you will do it!" White star said, embracing her.

"You will be the shaman here!" Ghost Owl assured her, embracing her too and smiling all over her snout.

"Good luck sister." her buffalo-like brother told her, giving her the hand in the way the second had taught them was usual under warriors. "You will find your guardian."

"When you're out, we'll celebrate." Muskrat said smiling. "And no Hunter of the world will be able to stop us."

"Yes, we all will together!" her German-looking brother assured. "This will be fun!"

"Until then." Her sister with the appearance of a Leopard, called 'Spotty' due to her spots and much to her disgust, said.

Little Panther gave them a large smile and nodded, even when she wondered if they truly believed what they said, or if they already had said goodbye to her in their minds.

She turned to Wolf and regretted not having declared their love in front of the clan... but it wasn't the time for such and they knew it.

"Don't you wish me luck too?" she asked silently, but Wolf shook his head.

"No, I know you need no luck." he explained, smiling slightly and stroking her hair.

In this moment, Little Panther would have died for his embrace.

"Are you ready?" Elk asked, standing before the entrance of the tent and looking seriously on them.

Little Panther nodded, left her love and her siblings behind and looked on Elk standing before her. He had two warriors standing at each side and the ones standing nearest to him had the Angel-Swords, even when they hid them under their wings.

"Child of this clan," Elk said, speaking the traditional words that the leader should speak for this. "You know the risk and are willing to go on the trip between the worlds to come back to serve your clan anew?"

Little Panther nodded, unsure about that come back.

"I do and I know the risk." she explained, unknowing where she took the strength from to speak so strongly.

Bear nodded in return and stepped aside to give her free way to enter the tent.

Little Panther entered the tent without looking back one time and when the door, made of leather, closed behind her she felt the hot air on her skin at once.

~ What am I doing here? ~ Little Panther asked herself, looking in the fire which burned hungrily. ~ Wolf should be here, not I! ~

But there was no way back now, she couldn't go out there and ask Wolf to do it... She would sooner die by embarrassment. 

Sighing, she sat herself before the fire and loosened the bag of her belt, weighing it in her claw. This was her entry into the world of twilight... the world of limbo how some called it.

Little Panther and her brother had been led into this world by Shaman and the second some times already, but this was her first trip alone, a test that every apprentice had to make before he or she became a full shaman, with the necklace as sign of the bound with their animal-spirit.

She looked on the bag and made the decision. While sitting down in front of the fire, which was so hot now that she felt the sweat running from her skin. She put the dried leaves on the back of her claw and then threw them into the fire.

The result came at once, in the form of green and blue smoke floating not just upwards but raising its tentacles sideways, but more determining was the scent she smelled. It was a pleasant scent, which somehow didn't have as much similarities with the scent of the plants she had made the powder of, but it proofed useful since she felt at once the world of limbo claiming her soul.

One thought raced through her mind while she drifted over. Her drifting was different from what she had seen when they were lead into this world by Shaman or the second, since it didn't change at once, but the two worlds seemed to overlap first before the world of limbo became dominant and the *real world* had vanished completely.

~ I am not as good as them ~ Little Panther thought ~ Wolf would make it better! ~

But there was no way back now, it hadn't been since she had declared in front of the elder that she would make the ritual and certainly not since she had entered the tent. There was just one way now, failing by trying or failing by giving up and the second had taught them that the first had definitely more honor than the second.

Slowly she stood up and looked around, knowing both that this was all real and that what she felt, saw and heard was all too real. She was there with her body like that, although her body still sat in the tent before the fire... It was just in another world.

In the world of limbo the fire was even greater so there, as a sign of the point where she had entered and as a sign of a place where the world of limbo and the real world, a false name since both were real, were so close that someone who had the potential and was trained in this could easily change, but Little Panther didn't need to look around to know that everything else was different. 

It began with the fact that she couldn't say which nighttime it was since there was neither moon nor stars nor the sun, which beams she always saw when it raised in the east shortly before she became stone. All she saw was an indifference... twilight ruling there. The second was that there were places in this world where the light was brighter or it was darker, but she couldn't call anything of this day or night.

While she looked further around, Little Panther noticed the other specific differences of the two worlds. Seemingly, everything seemed to live here. Sure, she normally saw no spirits or just those that wanted to be seen if they wanted so, but alone the shadows the trees threw through the light of the fire seemed to live, like the trees itself. Little Panther couldn't show it, she just felt it on one indescribable way which showed her the borders of the language in her world. 

Normally, when they had entered this world before, it was other. There were no trees, but even grass just outside the woods, but this place seemed to be in the middle of a large wood and it seemed as if the trees had grown around it.

Little Panther could now see a way... No, a path leading into the woods, vaguely into the direction of the mountains she saw in the distance over the tops of the trees.

She felt that this was her way, her way to her destiny and since in this world the feeling mostly counted more than knowing, since this world appealed more to the soul than to the brain, she had no reason to doubt on this.

She should go now, there should be no hesitating on the way to become a shaman, such had been taught to her by the second, but she couldn't do it until five seconds had passed, the darkness she not really saw, but felt was more than present.

__

"Don't think it is easy," her mother had once told her. "The path of a shaman is often dark and difficult, more difficult than you might imagine."

This voice of her mother was what let her make the first step in the direction of the path and when she had made the first step; the other was much easier even when her tail lashed around nervously.

She entered the forest and while walking slowly further she felt a coldness claim her soul when the doubts came back. Maybe she would go the way to an end, despite all the horrors which waited on her, but what then? 

What if there would not wait her animal-spirit at the other side of the path?

Her mother had told her about this. Sometimes, despite all the worthiness that an ascendant might have, the spirits decided that it wasn't his way and that so there was no spirit waiting on him, giving his promise to help him. 

Sure, these ex-apprentices were treated normally, they even often became healers through the knowledge they had gained during their training, but this was nothing like true shamanism.

~ Maybe this is my way? ~ Little Panther asked herself, feeling colder every minute.

*Crack*

Little Panther froze when she heard this sound and looked around believing to see something in the shadows before her, a pair of blue-yellow eyes looking on her in hate just to vanish back in the woods.

She swallowed, simply standing there, looking in the darkness which, other than the darkness in her world, didn't exist from the absence of light, but from a substance by itself. 

~ Go on ~ the voice of her mother said ~ you can't go back! ~

Little Panther bit her lip and moved on, listening hard to the forest, but not hearing anything anymore, yet she felt she was studied from something.

But just before she felt her last reserves of courage swindling, she noticed the light or better yet the twilight coming from the way before.

As fast as she could, but trying not to run, she walked down the path until she reached the clearing and breathed out a sigh of relief when she saw the empty sky about her.

By doing so, she didn't see the creature standing directly in front of her at the clearing, leaning on a tree not far away from a small lake near this.

"You shouldn't be so happy about being here..." a voice said coolly and with contempt. "You know you have no reason for it."

Little Panther looked ahead and saw something she hadn't guessed to see here of all things.

"Mother."

She whispered this unbelieving while staring on the gargoyle with the red hair whose face was hidden in the shadow.

"What has become of the second?" Demona asked and Little Panther believed to see a cynical smile on the usually hard face, "Or of teacher? This is our way!" 

Little Panther stumbled, looking on the teacher, more shocked about what she herself had said than what she had heard.

"You... you aren't her!" Little Panther said, realizing the truth of this. The creature that looked like her mother came forth and revealed her eyes... Eyes as black like the night. "You're a fake!"

"Mhhh, this would be fitting wouldn't it?" the creature, which looked like Demona, said laughing... "Especially since you're a fake too."

Little Panther swallowed at this.

"What do you mean?" she asked, even when she knew exactly what the creature meant. 

"You are here even when you know you shouldn't." the creature said crossing her arms. "This isn't your place, it should be your brother's... your love's, you took it away from him." 

"**NO!**" Little Panther said, desperately trying to justify herself in front of not just this creature, but herself. "This isn't true! I do it for my clan, for...."

"Tsk, Tsk, Tsk." the creature made, copying something the second had ever made to calm Little Panther and her siblings down when they were young. "Lie before you, but please not before me."

Little Panther bit her lip, she knew she shouldn't, but despite the black eyes she couldn't help but see her mother in this creature and somehow these eyes had always figured out when she was lying.

"You did it for you! Or better yet to please me?" the creature said, despite the fact that she didn't even try anymore to fake to be someone she wasn't "But you know you will never fulfil the expectations of the second, she will never be proud of you and claim you as her own."

The shaman-apprentice looked shocked on the creature with her mother's face, who had just revealed her greatest secret, a secret she would sooner die than to reveal it to anyone.

"And that is it what you want?" the creature said, despite the fact that she knew it "That after you save the clan by binding the guardian spirit, she will praise you, take you in her arms and say to you how proud she is that you are her daughter, her flesh and blood."

Little Panther tightened her fists until the claws cut into her flesh. Then she relaxed, knowing very well that when she would come back to the other world, her palms would be wounded.

"Yes." she replied weakly. "This is what I want." 

The creature grinned from one part of her beautiful face to the other.

"But, my foolish child," the creature explained with false compassion and love in her voice. "This will never happen, you will fail and you know it."

This hit Little Panther like a beat and she stiffened.

"You lie!" she said anew, more to convince herself from this than the creature since the largest part of her heart agreed with this. "I will become a shaman and you won't stop me."

The last words came out much harder and with more strength and security than she believed to have, but the creature simply shook her head as if she wanted to say that she knew the truth and indeed she knew. 

"You have already nearly turned your back on this path when you saw the creature on your path before and believe me, if you go any further there will be more such creatures." the creature noticed. "And they won't go away so simply."

The creature scratched the top of her nose.

"And even if you go down the path to its end, do you really thing that your animal-spirit, your guardian will wait there on you?" the creature mocked. "Since we both know the reason why you are here, I doubt this." the creature didn't give Little Panther time to defend herself. "You will leave the tent with nothing and become a healer. Good enough to help your love maybe, or to guard the hatchlings, but nothing more. You think your mother would be proud of you then? Why should she be proud of someone whom the spirits don't see as worthy?!"

Little Panther looked on the creature and urged her desperation away in a last hero-like effort.

"**NO!**" she screamed on her and when she had calmed down a bit. "You are part of the path, a danger, a test to see if I'm ready to go on! And I will!"

The creature smiled and Little Panther realized one of the great differences between this creature and her true mother. In all the time she knew her, her whole life, she had never seen her mother smiling so much, not even by the leader.

"No, I'm not part of the path and I am no danger." the creature replied and walked towards Little Panther, who moved a step back.

"Afraid?" the creature asked, smiling with cold warmth. "You needn't be, of all creatures in this world, I'm no danger."

With this, the creature stretched her claws after Little Panther's face and as much as she wanted, Little Panther noticed that she couldn't turn away.

The blue claw came nearer and... Actually went through her face, without what Little Panther felt anything, but a bitter coldness.

"This wasn't so bad, was it?" the creature asked.

"You are an illusion." Little Panther noted. 

"Just partly." the creature replied shaking her head while her red hair flew in a not existing wind. "I am here to offer you a gift."

Little Panther felt her heart beating in her throat.

"I'm not interested." Little Panther replied. "I know about the last time you gave this *gift* to one of us."

The creature smiled coldly.

"Oh, you don't know child, you don't know anything except the stories from your elders, like they did from their elders and this from theirs, but no one knows what happened." the creature said. "All you know are legends."

"Do you want to tell me that all this hasn't happened?" Little Panther replied. "That not one shaman was infected by you, the Kole Nako, which nearly destroyed our world? That he killed nearly killed all clans of my continent?"

The creature shook her head.

"Oh, this is true," she said, but now not smiling. "But this wasn't me, wasn't my part of the deal."

"Do you want to tell me that it was the shaman who did this?" Little Panther asked more than doubting. "You lie."

"Oh come now, think about it!" the creature demanded. "If the shaman was such a good guy before, why should he come to me? All I can offer is power and such he desired, not for his clan but just for himself. After he came back, his clan did not take this so well and tried to kill him because he would be possessed."

Again, this creature laughed.

"He did what he needed to do to defend himself, but once he had done so..." the black eyes in the loved face studied Little Panther exactly, seemed even to look into her soul. "Once he had done so, he noticed that he liked what he had tasted and decided to go on."

Little Panther shook her head. 

"You lie!"

"Has anyone of your elders ever told you a reason why he did it?" the creature asked. "No! He wanted my power and the knowledge of how to gain it and I couldn't neglect this, can't neglect it to anyone who comes to me and all he did with this power and knowledge was his freewill, not mine."

Little Panther did not want to hear this, yet a part of her doubted, maybe it was truly so and... She shook her head.

"Maybe it was his freewill to gain your power, but it is not mine." Little Panther explained. "I will go down the path... the path of a shaman, not yours!"

With this, she gathered the strength to go slowly around the creature looking like her mother who, much to Little Panther's surprise, didn't make any attempt to stop her and was halfway down the path to where the forest and the path... her path began anew when... 

"You should think about this again, child." the creature replied from behind Little Panther's back, who stopped. "You will do a failure by going on this path."

Little Panther felt a cold shiver running down her back by these words and she turned around just to see the creature looking on her with somewhat of false pity.

"Why?" she asked. "Because you'll kill me if I do?"

The creature laughed again and Little Panther felt for the first time hate coming up in her heart for this creature with the body of her mother, who mocked her so openly.

"You truly learn slowly!" the creature replied. "I told you already that I am no danger, but if you go down this path then you will sentence your clan to death on every case, it doesn't matter if you come back as shaman or how you hope they'll accept you as a failure, which you know you are."

"**What do you mean?**" Little Panther snarled on the creature.

The creature cocked her head to one side and smiled, seemingly pleased by this reaction.

"The humans in the town plan to attack your clan the next day." the creature explained. "They will slaughter you all."

"You lie!" Little Panther said.

"Oh, always this mistrust!" the creature replied unhappy. "But I will proof it to you."

With this, the creature walked to the little lake.

"Will you come?" it asked with false happiness.

A part in Little Panther wanted to scream no, but her curiosity was larger in the end and so she walked to the creature kneeling aside of the lake.

"Look!" the creature demanded and waved with her hand over the water.

This proofed that the creature had indeed some power, since the water slowly started to show a scene, happening in a building that Little Panther knew of... Well it was the only building that Little Panther had ever been in.

"The church..." she whispered and knelt down to see it better, there were men gathered in the church.

"Yes." the creature replied. "Look and listen well!"

Little Panther did so and started to even so hear something, first a murmuring and then voices... or better yet, one voice whose owner she knew without seeing him before her.

"... Now it is the time to attack them." the preacher explained. "We will kill these demons of darkness with the help of God... We will attack during the day when these demons, since they are creatures of evil, can't move and are vulnerable by the grace of our lord himself."

"But we can't attack them on the plain!" one of the men on the banks said. "They are protected by a spell and..."

"**A SPELL?!**" The preacher demanded to know, as if even this word was a sin. "No Christian need to fear spells of dark creatures if he truly believes in God!" 

On the silence he continued.

"I know what you think of, you remember the poor men who tried this once and whose corpses were given back to us, desecrated by them." he said and the looks of horror in many faces proved him to be true. "But they didn't have God on their side! They did it for money and out of their hunger for adventure, but not for their brothers and sisters."

  
He looked around in the doubting faces.

"Haven't they taken much food already and every year more?" he asked. "Haven't they proven often enough that they are dangerous? Don't their screams bring our children out of their sleep every night?" 

He looked around and listened a moment, noticing the agreeing murmurs that were enlarging every second.

"And then their so called help for you and your children when they are ill..." the preacher continued with contempt. "Don't they always demand, as price, our supplies? I say they make us sick even so to rob us the rewards of our work! If they are so powerful then why can't they take care of their own? They are nothing, but parasites! And without their leader, they are helpless! I say to you, with the help of our lord, let us destroy them once for all, we will...."

This was enough for Little Panther, more than enough and she felt her mother's temper ruling her completely.

"**ARRRRGHHHH!!!**" 

She screamed this so loud that many invisible spirits in the forests were stopped by what they were doing and looked most fearful in the direction of the voice.

Furious beyond words, she smashed her claws into the water, destroying the connection to her world, but it didn't matter for her, all what mattered was the anger she felt about the humans, which seemed to make her heart bleed.

~ Mother was right ~ Little Panther thought with red blazing eyes. ~ They are useless, treacherous and evil... They should all be killed! ~

Little Panther had never felt such anger before and even when she just imagined the preacher standing in front of her, she had to suppress a snarl. For some reason, she hadn't felt angry when she had seen Shaman dying, just shocked and sad, she had not even been so angry when her mother didn't come back, just worried, but as she now listened to these humans about how they were planning to kill her clan, and with this her love, how they called her clan parasites...

Little Panther turned her head to the creature with the body of her mother, noticing that she was smiling, truly smiling.

"Yes, it isn't a good feeling to learn how the humans are, is it?" the creature asked. "Believe me, I know!"

Little Panther tried to say something, but then she realized that she couldn't get out one word, so she first tried to breathe again.

~ Maybe it is an illusion. ~

But she rejected this idea at once. It had been real. She knew it in the depths of her soul.

~ The guardian spirit! ~ Little Panther thought.

"Oh now you come to the critical point." the creature mocked her. "You truly think your precious guardian spirit will protect you, your clan and your love, don't you?"

"He has ever done so." Little Panther replied, but she knew the creature knew more. "Why shouldn't he do so now?"

"Because he has been weakened." the creature replied. "Such it is ever, haven't you known this? This is the reason why your parents always did the ritual on the first night, because they feared that in the third night he wouldn't be there to be bound anew."

Little Panther swallowed, she knew this and the conclusion was something she didn't like.

"Why should I believe you?" Little Panther asked the creature. "Why should I believe anything of what you said?"

The creature took her claw to the part where her counterpart had her heart and looked as if she was hurt.

"You still don't trust me? This hit me!" she explained. "But if you want to follow your path further, then do it. You will see that I'm right."

The creature smiled when she turned around to the path, which led to the darkness and when she had entered the path, she continued.

"You will prove to be not just a shame for your mother, but the downfall of your clan!" the creature prophesied when she vanished into the shadows, which seemed darker on this path.

Little Panther, still kneeling aside the little lake, looked back at the creature and thought about what it had said, what she had seen with her own eyes. The humans planned to attack her clan during the day, she had no doubt about this, but what should she do? Maybe she should trust the guardian spirit like how her clan did since they had called him the first time, but then... It was late to make the ritual and she couldn't know if he truly had still enough power to protect her clan.

Shortly she thought about summoning him anew afterwards... If she would come as a shaman out of the tent, which she doubted ever more.

~ Even if I become a shaman, I won't be able to perform the ritual before daybreak! ~

Little Panther closed her eyes shortly, she had often seen Shaman making the ritual and it had always cost time.

It was midnight the last time she had been in her world and she didn't know how much time had already passed, especially since time in the world of twilight flew other than in the real world, sometimes faster and sometimes slower.

~ But could I do it in time? ~ She asked herself, but neglected this at once, ~ no I can't. ~

She was too slow. She would need twice the time Shaman had needed, maybe... She would even ruin the ritual completely and leave her clan unprotected for one year.

Little Panther looked to the two paths. The first was the way deeper into the woods and she felt like if she would go this way then she would discover a clearance in the woods with her companion-spirit... or without anything, but a way back to her world where her clan would see how she had miserably failed and would die.

The second path was darker, not just because there seemed no light in it, but Little Panther simply felt it was darker, as she felt that what the creature had shown her was true and a part of her heart didn't want to go there.

~ Maybe I'll have luck ~ Little Panther thought ~ maybe my mother has already returned like she promised or maybe there truly waits my companion spirit at the end of the path, maybe I can make the ritual fast enough, maybe... ~

__

"Little Panther is, in my eyes, too unsure." The second explained. "She is back in her warrior lessons and the learning of magic and even her skills in the art of shamanism are a bit backward compared to her brothers. Often she is diverted during the training and she is much too less eager in this... She wouldn't make a good second."

This memory was all that Little Panther needed. Her mother didn't trust her to do this and since she knew her mother was the best to judge about this, she had no reason to doubt that she would fail.

~ I wouldn't make a good second ~ Little Panther thought ~ and I wouldn't make a good shaman. The reason why I'm here proves it. ~

  
Tears started to run down her cheeks and she started to run on all fours and as fast as she could down the dark way, leading her in the direction of the mountains.

~ I can't help the clan as a shaman or a second, maybe on this way~ Little Panther thought ~ maybe I can make her proud on this way. ~ 

Little Panther didn't know how long she ran, she had tried not to think over the whole way, feeling that she was studied from the creatures in the darkness. It was darkness, not the twilight of before, but true darkness like night and Little Panther remembered her mother once telling her that in different parts of the world of limbo, sometimes different times ruled. She could even see the sun in different parts of this world, but without turning to stone.

Finally she reached the end of the forest where it met the mountains.

~ Have I truly gone so far? ~ She thought while looking around.

It was a truly disconsolate place, rocky and without any plants but dead trees. Little Panther has noticed this before already, as the nearer she came to this place, the more dead these trees seemed to be.

"Not a nice place for a holiday is it?" the voice of her mother asked her from behind. "But that isn't the reason why you are here."

Little Panther looked around shocked, discovering her mother.... No, the creature that had her mother's appearance, smiling on her and leaning against a dead tree.

"Come." the creature said and went aside the breathless gargoyle, leading her further into the wasteland.

Not knowing what else to do, Little Panther followed the creature until she reached the lake. It was a lake, but not of water, it was a dark liquid which somehow just pretended to be water.

It made Little Panther shiver just to see it and she felt that coming here might be the worst idea she ever had.

The creature, even when she looked on the lake, seemed to feel that.

"Oh, there is no way back now." she said, turning her head to Little Panther. "You know that it would cost too much time! So why don't you show just some courage and come nearer? This is what you wanted!"

Little Panther bit her lip, maybe this was truly what she wanted, but it didn't feel so.

"I have to drink it?" she noticed and the creature nodded.

"Yes, do so and you will have all the knowledge and power you will need to save your clan." the creature promised.

Great Panther's daughter swallowed and looked down on the blackness, being careful to avoid touching it with her feet claws since she feared it might catch her.

Carefully, she knelt down and studied the blackness without reflection and somehow she believed that she was studied even so. Little Panther looked up to the creature.

"If I drink this," she asked "will I be myself? Will all decisions be my own and not yours... or whatever this darkness is?"

The creature grinned.

"I promise." she said.

Little Panther looked back into the dark water before her and slowly scooped up, with both of her claws, some of the liquid in them. When the claws came out, she held a small bit of the black liquid in her claws. It should flow away, but it stayed in her hand, calm, it wanted to be drunk. 

~ For you mother ~ Little Panther thought and wished her last doubts away.

With one gulp, she drank it. 

****

10.06.1675; 04:01; the tent in the real world:

Little Panther slowly began to feel again and sensed the world around her without her eyes. Such she felt the heat in the tent, which stayed even when the fire had long since burned down and noticed with her keen nose even some of the aromatic powder she had thrown into the fire some hours before, which seemed a whole life ago.

And indeed it had been in another life...

Little Panther opened her eyes, which were so black that they shone in the night and smiled evilly.

With a slight snarl, she stretched out and sighed. 

~ Let's begin! ~

Her mind raced through what she had to do and what possibilities she had. The first thing was that if she would now go out of the tent, she would most likely be killed by them when they saw her. 

~ When they have a bit of brain ~ Little Panther thought and started to giggle evilly, ~ oh yes and everything of my freewill. ~

Her mind worked faster now, better and such that she got an idea on how to deal with this situation.

****

10.06.1675; 04:12; outside the tent:

Wolf kneeled impatiently in front of the tent and tried to figure out how long he had been actually waiting. He looked again, like uncounted times before, to the two other gargoyles guarding the entrance of the tent, armed with the Angel-swords. 

~ Waiting seemingly doesn't matter to them, as much as to me ~ Wolf thought, but looking in their eyes made him abandon such thoughts. It did, but as guards they took their job seriously, as it was their duty.

Nobody was allowed to speak, in order not to divert the ascending shaman in the tent. A silly order, Wolf thought since a shaman, gone over to the world of limbo, couldn't notice anything what happened around his or her body in the real world.

~ Maybe to not make each other crazy or scared ~ Wolf thought, even when he wasn't scared since he simply knew that his love would come back as shaman, maybe she wasn't as good as he was, but more than good enough.

Suddenly, the door of the tent opened and Wolf, like the guards, went into action at once, he by standing up, his elders by raising their swords. Wolf looked at his love and saw in the first moment a shadow over her eyes.

~ No! ~ He thought gasping.

Luckily, one moment later the moon came out and revealed her normal emerald-green eyes and her necklace, the sign of a shaman, hanging on her neck sparkling with red gems.

Little Panther smiled lovingly at him.

"Seemingly the clan has a new shaman!" she explained still smiling.

Wolf couldn't say anything, but ran to her and embraced her, despite the looks of the guards.

"I wouldn't have been able to do this without you." Little Panther told him, stroking his coat. "Thank you!"

Wolf was at first a bit perplexed at that, as by showing her love for him in front of the clan was against what they had agreed to do. But finally he smiled and held her tightly.

"I never doubted that you would do it." Wolf whispered in her ear. "Never!"

Unseen to him, Little Panther's smile became devilish, but when she again turned her face to him, it was lovely again.

"Ähem..." Old Wisel coughed. "I think we should go to the clan and report them the happy news... or the two happy news?"

Now the couple divorced.

"Just one..." Little Panther said smiling to Wolf, "For now."

Wolf nodded and looked to the guards, who were now smiling by themselves, happy that their duty had turned out to be un-bloody.

"Come; let us go to the clan." Wolf said and Little Panther agreed 

They walked side by side to the centre of the plain, when they arrived there they were greeted by the cheers of their siblings and the happiness of a clan, who for the first time since two nights, began to believe completely that everything would become good.

"I think this is enough." Elk said "Give them some space to breath." 

When the circle around the pair had lightened, Elk went nearer to them, smiling in relief and embraced his rookery daughter.

"Lass, in the name of the clan I congratulate you and greed you as the newest shaman of this clan." He said this still smiling and seemed for one moment very young while he looked on the amulet in the form of the head of a panther... just slightly different of the one that Great Panther wore. "Is there anything you want to say?" 

Little Panther hesitated then she nodded, as she turned to the clan.

"First of all, I want to thank you all for the trust you had in me!" Little Panther said, looking through all the faces who replied the looks, and her eyes stayed for one moment on the raven-like eldest before she looked further. "It is a pity that I can't bind the guardian spirit now, but it will be the first thing I will do tomorrow after awakening to once again make our clan safe. But for now..." she stopped shortly, hearing the total silence of her clan, until her lips spread to a wide grin. "For now, I would love to have a celebration."

"Thus you will have one." Elk assured her. "I think we all have earned one." 

The last question was directed to the clan, who responded this with a cheer, especially the hatchlings who loved such especially. 

Smiling softly and without turning to him, Little Panther grabbed Wolf's claw and held it tightly. Something in him shuddered by her touch, but when Wolf looked surprised on his love, she smiled a smile which promised more for the night than he had ever dreamed of in just a week before and this feeling was instantly forgotten.

****

10.06.1675; 05:24; the centre of the plain:

It was indeed a large celebration since the worry about the fate of the clan's former second and now leader was forgotten, at least for this time. The hatchlings especially seemed to enjoy it since they danced around the fire in a circle, lead by the rhythm the elder's gave them by playing a drum and a flute.

Wolf sat a bit away from the trouble, looking in the crowd of his clan with interested eyes and feeling how the worry of the last nights vanished completely.

~ There is nothing better than to know that your clan is safe ~ Wolf thought.

"My love." someone whispered in his ear.

~ Well there is one thing, ~ Wolf corrected himself.

He turned around and looked into Little Panther's deep green eyes while she slowly stroked his coat in a clear way.

"I thought we wanted to keep it still a secret for a while?" Wolf asked her, as if he wanted her to stop, yet he didn't want it to... ever.

Little Panther smiled and while she did so and looked deep into his eye's, Wolf felt again a cold shudder coming deep out of his bones, but fought it down, since it was bound to be a reaction on the fact that he felt the look of some of his siblings on them.

"Well," she began playfully. "I think we have a right for this after the last few nights, haven't we?"

Wolf nodded, even when he was not so happy at the moment, since he had just discovered his sisters Ghost Owl and White Star staring at them with wide opened mouth and snout.

"Maybe we should go somewhere where we have more place for our own." Little Panther suggested. 

"It is your celebration." Wolf replied, but his love shook her head.

"No, it is the clan's." she explained. "And I don't think that anyone will mind that we take a little time for our own."

Wolf looked into his love's eyes and nodded, as they had earned this indeed.

So the pair went, claw in claw, away from the happy sounds, not caring for who studied them and what the person thought or said. And some of the clan aside of the young warriors did indeed see.

"And she calls herself a shaman?" The old raven asked indignantly. "Simply sneaking away!" 

"Stop ruffling your feathers, old crow." Grey Wolf, who stood beside her, somewhat away from the mass of the crowd, admonished her with a tone which was on the face of humorous, but beneath his hard-like iron. "They have earned this time for their own and needed to wait on it long enough. We have others who guard the borders of the plane even now."

"Then they should have waited some time longer," the old raven said, "there is a town of humans in the valley that seeks our death."

"They always wanted our death." Grey Wolf corrected. "If Shaman's death had any good than it was that we remember this now. As for the young lovers, they shall enjoy the time they have, as I know Great Panther will mourn every second she hadn't been able to spend with her mate when she is back."

The female elder still looked after the young warriors, holding her beak closed.

"I am happy that Great Panther has taken over the training of our children." Grey Wolf continued. "I might not have agreed with her harsh training methods at the beginning, but now we see that this was necessary... Wolf's generation is already better warriors than we had been back then."

This retorted the old raven with a snort.

"Oh yes?!" she asked him. "You forget that it was a 'Hunter' who killed our leader. And from all we know, he searched for her, so if not for her then Shaman would..."

Her words were stopped by a loud growling, which shrieked both gargoyles and made them stare in shock on the source. 

The source was indeed Blackbird, a female of Shaman's rookery. She had the attributes of a wolf, with her mainly brown coat which was striped grey while she had white circles around her grey eyes. The most of the clan said that her totem fitted well, not just because she was a gifted singer and even so gifted in playing instruments, but because she even so had a soft and compassionate personality.

An observer wouldn't have believed this since she was still growling, curling her lips and showing her whole impressive fangs while she looked with blood red eyes to the old raven. Someone could very well believe that she had rabies.

"Don't speak it out or I swear I will tear off your miserable beak." she growled and due to the way she said this and the words she used, many of the gargoyles who had celebrated one moment before, turned around to her "And don't dare to speak so of my sister and your **leader** again, she surely has been hit through the loss of her mate more than enough, she doesn't need to hear your idiotic accuses too." she emphasized this by showing her one claw. "The Hunter hunts every gargoyle and this one has already slaughtered a clan, don't dare to think so otherwise."

The raven, having got back her calmness, studied her rookery daughter in a cool manner. She was just going to reply that maybe the 'leader' was the reason why the Hunter existed, but was stopped when another voice raised.

"What is the trouble?" It was Elk.

The large bear-like gargoyle looked around and could guess it from the way his rookery sister looked and who stood there.

"Sister, I think you are needed by the drums," Elk told her, laying one claw on her shoulder, "now."

Blackbird looked to her brother and for one moment he believed she would refuse, due to the fact that she was angry and that he had no official power given by the clan, but then she nodded and went away but not without throwing one last angry look on the raven elder.

When his sister was out of sight, Elk turned around to the ones of the clan looking on him. Luckily, there were no hatchlings amongst them since they were still dancing around the fire.

"It is okay," he explained to the clan. "Just a little conversation, so please go on." 

  
He led his eyes directed onto the group until he saw that most of them had turned away and were going back to the centre of the celebration.

"What is this?" Elk demanded to know of Grey Wolf and the old crow. "Don't you think the clan has earned a bit of peace after the last few nights?"

Grey Wolf sunk his head a bit while the elder looked directly in Elk's eyes.

"And you, I know you don't like Great Panther, but when you have something against her as leader, call an assembly when she is back and discuss this there." he explained. "I won't allow you to plot against her when she is not here, clear."

His sharp tone had made some of the clan look to him again, but like the elder he ignored this.

"Certainly, and be assured that I won't call an assembly." she explained icily. "We don't need one more division."

With this, she grabbed her stick and walked away, the eyes of Elk and Grey Wolf on her back.

"Old crow." Grey Wolf hissed and Elk didn't deny it.

****

10.06.1675; 05:43; the plain a bit away from the centre:

Wolf let himself be led by his love to the place he wanted and indeed it was no surprise for him that she brought him to the place where they had confessed their love to each other.

So they finally stood in front of the moon, looking in each other's eyes when Little Panther laid her wings on his shoulders and Wolf did even so. Then Little Panther threw herself on Wolf's breast, ruffling his hair while he stroked through her hair, which was black like the night, which she replied by purring softly in which he joined in at once, following an instinct as old as their race was. At the same time he inhaled her scent, enjoying every bit of it and knowing that he wouldn't forget this scent like this night as long as time would pass. 

Suddenly, Little Panther threw him on his back in the soft grass so that she laid about him, laughing genuinely.

"Hey..." Wolf began, but Little Panther placed one talon on his lips.

"Don't speak," she asked him. "Let us simply continue where the second stopped us."

Wolf agreed by taking his love's top with his teeth and then pulled it from her with this snout. Little Panther meanwhile skillfully removed her love's loincloth and in the end removed her own.

Wolf licked on her firm and well developed breasts, making her nipples rise and Little Panther herself breathing faster. They had sex as if it was their last and not just their first time and indeed it was.

****

10.06.1675; 06:42; the plain a bit away from the centre:

Little Panther, still naked until her amulet and such feeling the gold grass on her skin, studied her sleeping love smiling, seeing how little pearls of water ran from his coat.

~ This has been nice ~ she thought and was tempted to touch his face again, but omitted it since it might make him wake up. ~ A pity, but I have to work. ~

So she stood up carefully and grabbed her clothes, lying in the grass, dressing herself as fast as possible. 

Little Panther threw one last look on her love and then sneaked away. 

She went on all fours, fast, but without making any larger noises, as she was now better in sneaking than she had ever been at any time before, thanks to the fact that she now had better control of her body, but it would become better, much better indeed when she would have done what was to do.

Finally, she reached the rookery, which was unguarded as ever. For one short second she believed to feel a presence, like she had done often before and what, how the elders had told her when she had been a hatchling, was the guardian spirit watching over them, but indeed this presence was weak, too weak to stop her or to warn the others like her mother's mirror-image had told her.

Carefully, Little Panther went into the rookery, closing the massive doors behind her so as not to attract unwanted attention. Little Panther looked on the eggs, which were all supposed to hatch in three years, and sharpened her senses, not her normal ones but indeed the ones through which she had already contacted with the world between the worlds, even without a totem.

When ten seconds had passed, Little Panther smiled, having tasted something familiar just ahead from her. She went ahead, carefully making her way through the eggs lying there until she had come to one egg, lying amongst all of them and not being different from them in any form. 

~ But you are different, ~ Little Panther thought, touching the egg's shell, ~ for me and mother... _our_ mother. ~

Smiling evilly, she took the egg up and placed it between her arms, holding it securely since she didn't want it to be damaged in any way... It was too precious.

Slowly, she left the rookery and closed the door behind her.

~ By the Great Spirit, how easy this is! ~ She thought and wandered down the path she knew was the shortest way away from the plain.

Little Panther had nearly reached the border of the plain when a little voice stopped her.

"Big sister?" 

Little Panther turned around and would nearly had let the egg fallen. It was Little Raccoon, his innocent eyes looking on her over his black beak. 

"What are you doing with the egg?" the raven-like hatchling asked, curious but without mistrust in his voice.

Little Panther thought about it shortly. She could kill him, but maybe he would be able to scream before she was ready and this wouldn't be good, so she set up a large smile. 

"The egg is sick." she lied. "I'm taking it to the large rock in the woods to cure it. You know that I'm a shaman now?" 

The hatchling nodded, he had never seen an elder with an egg outside the rookery, but why should his sister lie?

When Little Panther saw that the hatchling seemingly believed his big sister, she added "And what are you doing here?" 

"Ähh..." the hatchling scraped with his feet-claws on the rocky ground. "Well, I just wanted to glide a bit and..."

Little Raccoon looked up to her with a mischievous smile.

~ He has sneaked away ~ Little Panther realized happily. ~ How fitting. ~

"You know it is not allowed for you to glide out since the human threaten us?" she asked, her tone now hard which made the hatchling wince.

"I will go back at once!" the hatchling promised and actually went down on all fours to run back to his siblings at the celebration, but Little Panther's foot claw on his tail stopped him.

"Not so fast." she told him. "I guess you will get into trouble when you go back?"

The hatchling nodded sadly.

"You needn't." his big sister assured him. "Wait until I come back, then we'll go to the elders together and I'll tell them that you helped me so that you won't get into trouble."

"Really?!" Little Raccoon asked enthusiastically and Little Panther nodded.

"Yes, but you must stay here until then..." she asked him. "Promise?"

Little Raccoon nodded and Little Panther smiled.

"Until then, little brother." she said goodbye to him and turned around, heading to the border of the plain... If the hatchling could have seen the smile on his sister's face now, he would indeed have thought about if everything was well.

****

10.06.1675; 06:52; Wolf's position:

Wolf awoke slowly from his slumber and for one moment he believed it had all had just been a sweet dream. This was until he discovered the scent of his love still in his nose and, more obvious, that he was naked. 

As fast as he could, he searched for his loincloth and put it on, fearing that any of his siblings or worse, any of the elder clan members would see him like this. When he was ready, he looked around.

~ Where is she? ~ He asked himself.

Surely Little Panther would be in the cave since there was work to do for tomorrow night and she had let him sleep.

Wolf smiled. He would go to her and see if he was able to help her, if just to be with her.

While he went through the small woods of the plain, up to the cave, he had the opportunity to think about his relationship with his love. 

Would they become mates?

~ You do this too fast ~ Wolf admonished himself ~ we have just mated the first night. ~

But it was more than just one mating for him, it was...

He had reached the entrance of the cave, forgetting for the time, when he felt it. A cripple in the bones that was a sign that something was there, something whose home was rather the world between the worlds, or the worlds behinds those instead of than in his world. 

When Wolf looked up, he saw it, a flickering in the air that was forming slowly into the form of a gargoyle.

"The guardian spirit." Wolf gasped.

"Yes," the spirit spoke. "Hear me, child of this clan..." he stopped, seemingly coughing heavily. "Your clan is in danger and I... I can't fulfill my oath.... too weak..." 

Wolf felt at once a heavy pack of ice in his stomach. 

"The humans." he concluded. "The humans will attack again?"

"No!" the appearance told her. "Your sister... is infected... she has an egg and will sacrifice it... she will kill the clan!"

Wolf stared unbelieving and totally shocked on the spirit.

"You are lying!" he whispered "Little Panther is..." 

"She is going to make the ritual far away from here in the woods..." the guardian spirit said. "Go, you have no time...." the last words became whispers in the wind. "My last reserves... I'm sorry..."

With this, the guardian spirit faded away completely, having given his last energy, which should have brought him over the next night, to warn the young warrior.

Wolf, on the other side, stayed looking unbelieving ahead until he regained control over his limbs and ran into the clan leader's cave, hoping to find his love there, hoping that the spirit had lied or was just an illusion, but the cave was empty.

~ What if he spoke the truth? ~ Wolf thought, even when he wanted to banish this thought from his mind, he had to be sure. 

As fast as he could, he raced down into the cave, grabbing one of the angel-swords from the table, praying that he hadn't the need to use it. Racing up again, he felt the weight of the sword in his claws, still praying that he was wrong.

When he had reached the entrance of the cave, he asked himself if he should inform the rest of the clan, but somehow he believed he hadn't the time for this and what if he was wrong, how he prayed with his whole heart.

Quickly, without thinking about it, Wolf ran the way down to the border of the plain he knew was the shortest.

~ It can't be true ~ he thought while running on all fours and as fast as he could. ~ Her eyes are normal, she can't... ~ 

Wolf was so sunken in his thoughts that he literally fell over the hatchling that was sitting on the way down.

"Ahhh..." he screamed, stumbling and finally falling in the dust and hitting the ground with his right shoulder, which was nothing since he had just missed the fate of killing himself by his own sword by centimeters.

The hatchling just looked on his older brother totally shocked.

"What..." Wolf began, massaging his aching shoulder. "What are you doing here?"

The hatchling winced, as he knew he shouldn't be here, but at least his big brother didn't sound angry, just totally surprised.

"I'm sorry." Little Raccoon said with a small voice "Our sister said I could wait here."

"Our sister?" Wolf asked, as he felt ice racing through his veins. "Little Panther?"

The hatchling nodded

"Yes she had the egg and..." Little Raccoon continued, but was stopped at once by Wolf.

"The egg...." it was more a whisper coming out of Wolf's snout, but the hatchling looked in fear on him, fearing that he might have said something wrong and would get now into even more trouble.

"It... It is okay." Wolf assured his little brother so as not to scare him completely, even when he knew exactly that nothing was okay, and that maybe it would never be again. "Just tell me where she went to."

"To the large rock in the woods, there she wants to heal the egg." the hatchling explained confused. "Why?" 

Wolf didn't answer, he couldn't.

"Wait here." he ordered the hatchling and ran off to the border of the plain and where Little Panther had headed to, praying by all what was that it wasn't too late.

****

10.06.1675; 07:32; Wolf's position before the rocky plain in the woods:

Wolf glided as fast as he could, but still a voice inside him told him that he was too slow, much too slow. 

~ I can do it ~ he thought ~ the egg will slow her down and I will arrive maybe even before her! ~

His hope alike the part of his mind, which constantly tried to assure him that all was well, had gone more and more silent while he glided to his destiny, but it completely vanished when Wolf saw it. 

His sister stood behind a rock formed like an altar, now being used as such, but now in a form of the Christian cult of the flesh and blood. But unlike the Christians God whose bloodlust had been satisfied by the flesh and blood of his only son, the being Little Panther worshipped still longed after such, if just to give something and in a much crueler form than the Christian God had ever longed to.

Wolf saw it and let all hope went off since he saw that the egg had already been split by the same sort of dagger he wore as a shaman in practice and that the blood and innards of the egg and its content flew down the natural altar. 

~ Perhaps I'm not too late to stop this ~ he thought, banning the image of the egg's large and now dead contents out of his mind, ~ perhaps I can surprise her and... ~

His hope proofed foolish since in this moment, his love looked up, noticing him with her absolute black eyes and smiling a vicious smile, which proofed to him that she knew very well that he could never reach her in time. 

Despite all this, despite the dead fetus lying on the altar, despite the fact that if she had success, Little Panther would very likely destroy the world and kill every life on it, beginning with their own clan, he couldn't but think of if that maybe he could still save his love.

~ If I can capture her, I might try a ritual on her to cleanse her of the evil ~ Wolf thought while the wind blew against his snout. ~ Or Great Panther might do it when she is back... Surely she can! ~

But Little Panther never gave him the possibility to end this thought. With the same bloody dagger that she had used to destroy the egg, she painted a circle of blood just between her little chamois-like horns on her forehead. She spoke some last unholy words, which Wolf couldn't understand due to the distance and the wind. Then it happened...

The gates to the world between the worlds opened and Wolf could feel it, but it was other than what he had felt before, when Shaman or Great Panther had called the spirits. It was far more brutal, nearly a constant rift, which came out of the remains of the egg.

Whatever happened in this moment, the Angel-sword in Wolf's claw started to glow white of an unbelievable intense. In the same moment, the wind became too much and Wolf saw himself to land on all fours just ten meters, ten short meters before the altar with his sister.

Meanwhile, out of the mass of blood and flesh, came a tentacle that was blacker than the night itself, hitting Little Panther in the circle of blood she had painted on her forehead.

"AHHHHHHH!" Little Panther's scream echoed through the night and for a second, Wolf thought the earth itself would shake, but this was until he saw the changes occurring in his love's body.

First and most obvious was her two little horns that enlarged and turned until they looked like that of grown up rams. The one spike on her shoulder grew even so and got two smaller spikes by their sides with them. On Little Panther's tail, which lashed wildly in the air, grew four times large, sharp and deadly spikes and Wolf believed to see her while body enlarging.

When it was over, even the body of Little Panther had changed, fitting to her soul and she looked to her love with a smile, studying him with totally black eyes.

"Ahhh, you have arrived!" Little Panther noticed smiling, walking around the altar and still with the bloody dagger in her claw. "I really hoped you would do so."

Wolf couldn't do anything, but raise his sword in a defensive position as Great Panther had taught them, but it was more an instinctive reflex than anything else since the greatest part of his mind had stopped thinking.

Slowly, Little Panther came nearer, pliant like a wild cat, until she stood shortly before the blade of his sword.

"Come on, do it." she told him... offered him. "One push and it is all over." 

Wolf tried, he tried to give his muscles the order to lead the sword against her and kill her with one hit. But his muscles didn't obey and before he could gather the strength and the will to do it, Little Panther kicked the sword out of his claw.

"Oh, you held the sword too softly," Little Panther criticized. "Our teacher would be angry, but luckily she is not here."

"The amulet, your eyes..." Wolf began with an emotionless voice. "How were you able to hide it?"

"Good old magic." Little Panther explained, tapping on the part of burned wood on her breast, fixed with a part of her own black hair. "One of the tricks Great Panther taught me, even when I doubt that she ever thought of that I would use it that way."

Little Panther laughed and spoke a spell.

"Illusionare!" 

Suddenly, she seemed to be in her normal form again, complete with the amulet, even her eyes had returned to green and Wolf knew that she did this to torture him even more.

"Ironic really?" she asked him. "If you had worshipped magic a bit more then you would have known of this, maybe felt what I did, but you didn't… you chose to concentrate on becoming the shaman of the clan and that was it."

Wolf didn't say anything, but studied the gargoyle he loved or better yet, the creature of darkness she had become.

"Mhh, shall I tell you a little secret?" Little Panther asked by softly touching Wolf's snout, something Wolf shuddered from. "You should have become Shaman!"

Wolf's eyes enlarged, but he still hadn't said anything.

"Oh yes, I accidentally heard our leader and his second talking about this and just guess what they said! You should be the next shaman because I was back in my lessons...." she stared on him with pretty dark green eyes, which were now just an illusion. "Oh, how I hate you for that!"

"You lie." Wolf replied, this time stronger, he looked shortly to the angel-sword lying on the ground, but he knew he would be too slow to take it up before his love would attack him. "You don't hate me... And for all what you did or what you do, I forgive you, since this isn't you."

Little Panther smiled viciously, stroking the hair on his breast and despite all what had happened and what was about to happen, Wolf began to feel a lust on her again.

"Oh really? Maybe you aren't the right one to give absolutions like the good preacher in the town would say, since you are guilty on all this too." she explained to him. "If you would have checked me a bit better when I came out of the tent, or if you had simply listened to the little voices in your head, then you might have discovered what had happened, but you didn't." The last word she whispered into his right ear. "You were too horny to fuck me than to think of that." 

Her eyes were now directly in front of his, seemingly trying to drill into his soul.

"Yes." Little Panther concluded. "And since you didn't kill me when you had the opportunity to do so just some minutes before, you have betrayed your clan and delivered them to death. Isn't this bad?" 

Wolf stayed silent, looking straight ahead, he knew she wouldn't become stone at day, nevermore.

"You haven't warned them, have you? You have told nobody of your suspicion?" Little Panther asked and answered the question through her staying look into his eyes. "No you haven't. What a pity! I would have had no problem to find them everywhere in the radius they would have been able to flee to in this short time until daybreak and the look of fear on their faces would be priceless."

Wolf couldn't, but thought on Little Raccoon, sitting on the way and waiting on him and Little Panther to return, had he gone back to the elders already? Wolf doubted it and the idea that his little brother would die alone made him sad.

"Well," Little Panther sighed, looking to the horizon which had started to become red as a sign of dawn. "Any last words?"

Wolf looked directly into her eyes, as much as it pained him to do so. 

"I love you and always will do so." he said, a tear dwelling out of his eye while he felt his body turning to stone for his last sleep, his last thought was that he had failed her.

Little Panther studied him with dark eyes and then, she captured the tear which ran off his snout, now turned into stone in the air with her right claw. Slowly, she led this tear to her nose and mouth and inhaled its salty scent, afterwards licking her claw.

"Mhhh, tears of pain taste sooo good!" Little Panther told the world in general and Wolf especially. "But why not, since you have given me your heart!"

Suddenly, faster than any observer would have believed it to be possible, Little Panther tightened her left claw into a fist and hit Wolf on the place of his breast she knew the stoned heart was in, making a large hole in it.

She returned her claw out of the hole, looking on the stone she held in it.

"But my love." she said to Wolf who would never wake up again. "You have a heart of stone!"

Little Panther laughed her mad laughter wide over the plain and began to destroy her love's body completely, as warm up to the slaughter to follow.

****

Somewhere somewhen

Somehow the life-movie was stopped and Lucifia was happy about this. She sensed that something was missing, something important.... 

When she had killed her love back then, him and her whole clan except her mother, Lucifia had felt joy which had been near the border to ecstasy and she had nearly even so wiped out the town before she realised that her mother was near and such she had the opportunity for an even better game. It had been fun, but now....

Now she felt nothing like this, no satisfaction about Wolf's last tear, no joy about feeling her love's chest torn to rubble, just an emptiness in her heart Lucifia couldn't explain herself and a feeling...

~remorse?~ she asked herself and the emptiness surrounding her, but this was impossible, ~this would be feelings for Little Panther, not me~

And when Lucifia returned her concentration back on the live-movie it continued, showed her how she slaughtered her clan inclusive the eggs in the rookery, how she slyly placed the death fetus which would have become her brother in the rookery and most of her death love's rubble beside that of their siblings and how she placed the angel-sword back into the cave and the 'evidences' for the human attack where she had been sure that her mother would find them.

It had been much work indeed and it proofed as bad investment since her mother somehow discovered that she had been the one responsible for the massacre.

~I should ask her once how she has found it out~ Lucifia thought.

She lived once again the moments of the battle with her mother and finally with her whole clan concentrated in Great Panther and then the imprisonment in the rock... not being able to move, to breath or to do anything but thinking.

Sure she had told her mother that she had trained all the years of being caught in the rock and indeed she had, by thinking of the scenes of the fight again and again, analysing what she had done wrong, why someone so weak like her mother could defeat her.

Finally she had concluded that she had simply been to self-secure against her opponent and sworn to make it better if she would come out. And then, 320 years after her defeat, she had got her second chance... thanks to the humans.


	3. A man's decision

****

10.01.1992; 16:52; in the wild:

A solid figure, possibly a man, dressed in a solid tracking jacket, which cap was covering his head, warm trousers and wore a large bag on his back, went up a stony path in the mountains, the sun shinning unusually hot for this time, especially since there still laid a lot of snow around and partly covered the path.

But this didn't matter for the man since he knew the path like the back of his hand even when he hadn't set a foot on it for years now... four years to be exact and he regretted no second of it.

The man stopped for a moment, breathing heavily and creating small clouds in front of his mouth through this. Finally he removed the cap, revealed his head and so proofed that he was indeed a man.

He wore short blond hair and had deep-grey eyes, just some folds around his eyes proofed of the life he had and an observer would have guessed him around thirty. All in all he had an ordinary appearance, neither looking ugly nor beautiful, but with the spark of determination in his eyes.

While looking around in the landscape he knew so well he dried his forehead of the pearls of sweat which covered it and which cooled down fast in the cold wind. It wasn't that the life in the civilisation had weakened his condition so badly, he believed that nothing could weaken the condition of someone who had grown up here.... a lot. Indeed it was his bag, or better its heavy contend which slowed him down.

By sensing the landscape he saw it, some trees cut down not long ago. They were well hidden in the undergrowth and someone who didn't search after it wouldn't have discovered it.

~like intended~ 

While the man thought this he went further, saw three small columns of smoke emerging from a point ahead and fastened his pace.

Such he arrived after some minutes at his destiny, the town.... well if someone could call it so. Indeed it were mainly some houses gathered around the church which top had been broken somewhen it its history. No house was as old as the church, which stood here since the very beginning of the 'town' but the man knew that they were constantly repaired as good as their inhabitants were capable of which was much considering the few tools they owned.

Directly in front of him was a large rock which made the original centre of the town. Once, such the legend said, there had been much of wood to strike a fire, but now there was just a small single bell, made in a time long ago, but still doing her duty by calling the inhabitants to an assembly or to the service....

Oh the man knew that there was the large bell of the church still stored up somewhere in the town, but the inhabitants had decided to not use it since it was too loud, attracted too much attention. like the high tower of the church itself once which was maybe one reason for that he didn't exist anymore.

The inhabitants.... 

The man knew that there were inhabitants here, as he knew that the earth was a ball. They were in the houses with with the partly boarded windows or in the church itself, looking on the stranger who dared to invade their place. 

With determined steps the man ascended the rock, placed his hand on the tongue of the bell and started to ring it.

"HEY TOWN!" the man screamed "YOUR LOST SON IS BACK! JAMES DOWER IS HERE!"

James ended the ringing and looked around. Everything remained quite except for some crows or ravens who flew away from some near trees, complaining heavily for being disturbed such brutally.

Some long seconds there was nothing, but the sounds of pigs which were held by the town's inhabitants. Then, as James had foreseen it the door of the church, which had hung a bit outside, opened and revealed the man who had waited in it.

He was a man of sixty, maybe seventy, proofed through the garland of white hair. His clothes were complete black and proofed that he was indeed the preacher of this church... or what the inhabitants of this town called such.

Slowly even other people came out of the shadows of their houses, older man and women mainly, but even some of his own age and three children, a girl and two boys.

No one of them wore as fine clothes as the preacher did. Some clothes were clearly made in the civilisation, others were made of the coat of wild animals the people used to hunt and partly the clothes were a mix of both.

The lot of the crowd looked frowning on him, being not happy about his return, while there was one woman, already in her older years, who looked on him with eyes sparkling full of happiness, while the man beside her and around the same age looked on him with cold eyes.

James didn't look on the crowd directly, but waited until the preacher, who was at the same time the leader of his parish, began.

"It has been a long time James." the preacher said in his usually calm and cold tone "But you were always a slow learner. Good that you have come to senses."

James frowned. He hated this man! He had hated him from the time up when he was ten and had made an joke during his lessons in math by him which his comrades took for very funny. The teacher indeed did not and so James got a burning bottom for the rest of the evening. 

Someone else might have called it the feelings of a child, but this feelings stayed when he had already forgotten which joke he had told and when it came to these events which led him to go away four years ago this hate broke out complete.

But this wasn't the time for old memories....

"I didn't come to let myself be ruled by you again." James replied "I just came back for a visit, nothing more."

The man eyed him cool.

"Pity." he replied. "But I hope you will see that this is your home and will ever be it, like you'll see that you were wrong."

James's angry eyes proved that he didn't thought so and while the eyes of the men stayed confronted, the other inhabitants of the town came nearer. Even when he was locked in this little combat James noticed them all.

The preacher's, whose name he had forgotten, son came nearer behind his father. He was at the same age as James and indeed they had been class-mates along with some others. His former friend's eyes were cold, but this didn't surprise James or even hurt him, who had been his friend died in this night years ago, now he was just the preacher's son.

The same he felt for the others around him, for his former town... well they called themselves clan sometimes, but it didn't matter.

"You may stay here as long as you wish." the preacher explained "As long as you hold the rules."

Without waiting for a reply or anything else, the preacher went back into his church, while his son stayed, looking on his once closest friend.

"Why have you come back?" He asked and his voice.... Michael's voice sounded a bit sad.

"Because I had to." James replied, with the same coldness in his voice as he had shown his former friend's father.

Michael looked on his former friend one moment longer, then he turned around, following his father back into the church.

~his fathers successor in every meaning of the word~ James thought cynically, looking after him, but then he somehow regretted this thought. Michael was what the life... this community had made him to.

James turned around to the rest of the community who had gathered around him. There were few of his generation, fewer children and no one who had been born after he had gone.

The children eyed him carefully but curious, most were too young to know him still and the one who did, didn't show any signs of happiness about seeing him, being held back by their parents who surely had told them nothing good about him.

The grown ups, including these of around his age, eyed him from cold to hostile and in their eyes stood one word: 

'TRAITOR'

James was going to say something when a woman in front of him came near to him.

"You can sleep by us James." she explained warm-hearty. 

James was going to neglect this since he had a tent in his rucksack and the woman's husband just looked on him with cold eyes, showing that he wouldn't welcome him, but when he saw the pleading in the eyes of the woman he gave in.

"Ok mother," he explained "I will go to your house."

With this he went down the rock to his mother who embraced her only son, not caring for what her neighbours or her husband thought.

"It is your home." she whispered to him "It doesn't matter what happens." 

James returned the hug just slightly and then let off, looking for one moment in his mother's eyes and then nodded.

Such they went through the small crowd of people, going on a way leading to an house, not different from the other houses in the town and just so as it has been in James's memories all these year.... he couldn't overcome himself to call it home again.

On their way James noticed that his father stayed back, watching him with some other of the town's people. 

It didn't surprise James, indeed it didn't.

"It hasn't changed." his mother explained, seemingly reading his thoughts. "And your room is like you have left it... mainly." 

James nodded, he knew what the changes would be.

They entered the house and he felt it. The warmth of an old stove heated by a fire burning with wood, the smell of thousands familiar things overwhelmed him for one second and he remembered himself sitting before the stove, hearing stories with...

~no!~ he thought, fighting back the memories ~not now~

"Please lay down your rucksack." his mother pleaded "Your muscles must ache from it."

James nodded. 

"I will lay it down in our..." he corrected himself "my old room." 

His mother nodded, a slight print of pain in her eyes.

"We haven't changed anything." she explained, going slowly into the kitchen.

James sighed and went to the door which was as old as the house until the little half-moon on it, made by his father in a time long ago.

~she always loved it~ James thought, but then got his self-control back and opened the door.

His old room was frustrating clean, proofing both that his mother cleaned it from the dust and that no one had been here for long time.

~I thought they would have made an junk-room out of it~ he thought, taking down the rucksack and placing it before his bed, carefully for its content and trying not to look at the other, now ever empty bed on the other side of the room. ~dad would sure have done so, but mum prevented it~

James was thankful for it.

Some minutes late he came out of the room, seeing his mother working in the kitchen.

"I will make roasted goose." she explained "Your favourite."

Her son nodded thankful.

"Mom I have to go out..." he explained "Making a visit. I will be back soon."

His mother nodded, she knew where he went to.

Not looking back again James went out off the door, happy to see that no one was there to see him. Then he walked slowly along the way leading him into the woods closer to the large rock raising in the sky and which, according to the legends had a plain on it.

Finally he reached it, a field bordered by stonewalls which protected the cemetery of the wilderness around it. Slowly he walked in, heading to the place of the newest grave.

It wasn't a large grave and the one who read the letters on the wooden cross understood why.

****

MARIA DOWER

1979-1988

__

God decided in his unfathomable will to take her from us much too early.

When he read this it was as if someone had punched his kidneys. 

~this damned bastards~ he thought, clenching his hands to fists and controlling himself not to scream out loud ~these goddamned hypocritical bastards~

If he ever needed one more reason to do what he had planned this was it.

James knelt in front of his sister's grave and looked around. This cemetery was as old as the town and he knew that somewhere there was the grave of 'the good Michael' how he was called by the town. He was the last one whose grave had been marked with a true gravestone and the one who was responsible for what had become out of the town... in the end he was the one responsible for James's sister's death and James hated him for this even when he had died so many years ago.

But it would end soon, it all....

****

10.01.1992; 20:52; the Dower's house:

He had come home late, but his mom told that this had been OK since she had needed time to prepare the meal. His father arrived shortly after they had set the table, soon because he had spoken with some of his friends of the town until then.

Now father and son starred at each other from the ends of the table with James's mother as damper in the middle while they ate the meal. Despite the fact that this dish had ever been his favourite and he had discovered that no one in the world outside could made it so good like it had tasted home, James couldn't relish in the taste, but felt his father's eyes lasting on him.

"Well son how is the world outside?" His father asked when he removed the last piece of flesh from of the goose's right leg on his plate. "Anything _important_?"

James looked up from his plate which was just half empty.

"Well the stock-exchanges go up, the budget deficits go up even so..." his eyes now started to sparkle sarcastically. "Oh yes the UDSSR has gone under, Germany is reunited and such the cold war is finally over, but this isn't really important here is it?"

The older man's eyes now grew completely cold.

"We know through Michael who did his job in the city." he explained "And through the radio we own." 

He pointed with his finger on the radio standing on the shelves. 

"Oh yes a radio you allow yourself to switch on just once a month in order to spare batteries." James replied sarcastically, reminding of his own portable TV he had on the top of his rucksack. "Should I be impressed father?"

James could see that his father struggled forcefully with himself to not stand up.

"You know this is all the town can allow itself from the work of its children." He said "But sometimes I think it was an error to allow you to go into the world outside they have poisoned you."

This on the other side was something James couldn't accept.

"You sent me down because you needed money for the few things the town allows itself!" he accused "Which isn't much thanks the poor skills we got taught here."

He eyed his father angrily and then continued.

"But now I have a good job and I worked hard for it." he explained. "Maybe I could care for that everyone in the town can get jobs, too." 

"You know that this is against the rules." his father explained icily "There would be too many questions of the outsiders and here has to be someone who fulfils the duty." 

James laughed bitterly.

"You haven't changed, have you father?" he asked, just to continue. "You still believe what the preacher tells you."

This let his father stand up, glaring on him about the table. 

"It is what you have believed before you became a traitor," the father replied angrily "and it was what your sister believed in."

"My sister would have believed everything you told her because she loved you." James answered "But you betrayed her, you and the whole town."

His father's face became completely red and he felt as if he had been hit by his son.

Meanwhile James's mother just looked on her both men who looked on each other with hate and tried to suppress her tears. Sure she could go between them and maybe could stop them, but she had some knowledge in medicine and knew that sometimes it was better to pull out a thorn at once than to wait until the wound festered and this had festered too long.

She wanted them to be a family again so it had to be. Just this pulling out hurt so much....

"We did what we had to do." James's father defended himself. "There was no other way."

"**THERE WAS ANOTHER WAY!!!**" James's screamed on him, not noticing the little tear in his left eye. "We could have brought her to a doctor, a real doctor with medicine and everything which would have been needed to save her life. It was just an appendicitis goddamned."

"When we knew that it wouldn't become better it was already too late for this." his father replied "Bringing her down would have been too much for her."

"Then we should have asked for an doctor to come here like I asked you and the town to do." James said "They would have sent a goddamned helicopter for this."

"The town has decided against this." his father told him. "We can't risk to let this town and his mission let be known in the world outside. We have a holy duty...." 

"Don't come me with this." James warned him "Just don't come me with this."

His father's eyes became dark.

"We have the duty to guard this place since 300 years given from our ancestors." he cited "When the angel of god had imprisoned the demon into the rock out there in the wood she gave us the holy mission to guard it because else it would destroy the world."

"This is just a tale!" James noticed "A story in which just children would believe in. There are no angels in the world nor are demons, dragons or fays or anything like this and all what is here is a family who likes to hold us in fear, to control us."

"The angel gave Michael and his family the order to guard the demon's prison." the father explained "Such he became the leader of the town, like his descendant's have been ever since and like Michael will once."

"All lies." James replied "Made to hold you here. There is no proof neither will there ever be one."

He breathed heavily by looking on his father.

"You let her die for a lie."

This was enough for James's father and he stood up, wanting to teach his son a lesson. But James's mother stopped him on half of the way.

"Abe, James this is enough." she pleaded.

"No he has gone too far Martha." James's father screamed angrily. 

  
"James please go to your room." James mother asked him and he followed this especially since the request had many similarities with an order, but he gave his father a last look of contempt.

He went to his room and closed the door behind himself with a bang, standing now behind it and looking around while he breathed heavily. On the other side of the door he could hear his parents arguing and his father played the role of accuser, asking why they allowed him to be here and how he had dared to speak so while his mother calmly, but more and more successful tried to calm him down.

His father wouldn't beat his mother, he never had and never would, no matter how angry he was. He even so hadn't beaten James or his sister once and James knew that his father was a good man, which made all this even worse.

Slowly James put out his solid boots and laid himself on his old bed as if it was the most natural in the world. 

His mind wandered. 

~the whole town is somehow related and they know it~ he remembered ~soon the genetic basis will be too small and then?~

A part of him shuddered by this.

~I will end this~ he thought ~I will goddamned end this and maybe then...~

It knocked at the door.

"It is open." he replied, but this was futil since the door had no lock.

His mother came in, looking on him worriedly.

"I have calmed your father down." she explained a bit sad "But please stop of attacking him so."

James looked on his mother with hard eyes, then he nodded.

His mother sighed and turned around back to the door, but stopped then.

"Its hurt him more than you might imagine." she explained slowly and sadly. "Us both, please don't judge him for what you see. He is in pain every time someone calls her name."

James sat up on the bed.

"I know he is." James noticed "But I even so know that he is still believing the preacher and that he would act so again, this is what I can't forgive him."

His mother looked on her son with tears in his eyes. 

"Maybe one time you can James," she answered "maybe one time."

With this his mother went out of the door and closed it behind herself, leaving her son alone with his thoughts.

After some time and after he was sure that his father wouldn't come in anymore, James stood up and grabbed his rucksack. He opened it and took the thing off it which he had packed in at last.

It was a mobile TV, one of the newest sort and small like no one before but still heavy. James smiled when he thought about how Maria would have loved it. When he had been down in the civilisation every day without him had hurt her like his mother had told him afterwards, but when he had come back, telling her stories about all the wonders of civilisation and giving her the cloak as present her joy couldn't have been greater like his.

By thinking on this James looked on the empty bed on the other side of the room and the smile which had sneaked on his face vanished at once.

If he had ever needed one more reason to act just in this night he had it now. 

Following an intuition he laid the mobile TV on the ever-empty bed of his sister, removed the mobile tent and the sleeping bag from his rucksack and took him on after he had taken his coat.

Slowly he crept out of the window, into the woods, to his destiny.

When he passed the first trees he wondered how easy it was for him to remember the path after these years. He and Michael had been young when they decided to go to the place the grownups called the prison of the demon, which they believed completely in. 

An act of youthful resistance against the world they knew and sometimes James asked himself how Michael thought about it now. Back then for James it was just a rocky plain in the woods, not nearly so impressive as what was near the town. 

It had been low enough for them to climb on it and James had done so while Michael stayed back. On it James had seen nothing or horrible, but after a time Michael, who had become slightly white in his face, had asked him to let them go away, something James had finally agreed in even when he had teased him later for this.

Deep down James had felt it, too, like a shadow on his heart and in this night he had woken up from his sleep through a nightmare he later couldn't remember anymore what it had been.

~but I'm no child anymore~ James thought, now being already near enough to the plain to see it. ~and I have to do what is necessary to free the town of its 'holy mission'~

Finally he reached the rock and allowed himself to just breath some moments, creating small clouds of steam. Sure the rucksack was easier now, but through the darkness he had had to watch the ground for roots since he couldn't simply use his torch because someone in the town would have noticed this maybe and no one there would have been happy about what he planned.

Finally he placed the rucksack on the ground, opened it and removed a small blanket just to reveal the main content of it... many pounds of TNT.


	4. Rising again

****

11.01.1992; 1:13; small rocky plain in the wood:

James had needed some time to find the right places to fix the different sticks of dynamite in, since he wanted the explosion to have the greatest effect on the plain. Luckily he had taken a flashlight with him since it was difficult to find the right way onto the plain and on it... Well on it, he believed to be able to remember what had woken him up on this night so long ago.

Now, as he stood in the distance of some meters before the rocky plain, hid behind a large tree and the fuse in his hand and the now practically empty rucksack to his feet. 

This was the turning point, as he knew it. He hadn't had enough TNT to destroy the entire plain, but the explosion would surely destroy large parts of it and then.... 

He knew that the people in the town would hear this for sure and considering human curiosity, they would win over their fear. Then they would come here and ask questions...

James didn't make himself any illusions, they would be angry on him at the beginning, maybe even kill him, but it was worth every price, because finally they would recognize that they had been wrong for 300 years and would end their isolation.

~ By speaking of the price... ~ he thought, slightly amused. ~ I think I'm fired. ~

In the four years he had started to work in a factory for dynamite, through hard work he slowly ascended to a position with higher responsibility and access to dynamite and other explosive materials. The funny thing was that he hadn't planned it from the beginning to use his job by helping his town, but that the idea came slowly, over months.

He made himself no illusion that this theft would be noticed in about three days and that it wouldn't take long for the police to find out who the thief was, but otherwise what was a job, or the life he had made for himself against what he tried here?

~ For you Maria ~ he thought, pressing the button. ~ My life for you. ~

***_BAARRTTHHGHHHHHNG_***

The sound of the explosion raced through the valley like a hammer and birds rose in the heavens, protesting in shock about something they didn't understand, while the few deer which existed still in the woods, fled in all directions.

The people in the town meanwhile prayed to the lord that this might not be the night they had always feared when the demon freed herself, while others just ran around in total surprise.

James was confused too, even when not as much as the people in the town. The explosion had been loud, louder than he had guessed it to be. It had nearly sounded like a scream, but this wasn't what confused him, but the total darkness that surrounded him now.

~ Have I freed the darkness from within the rock? ~ He thought. ~ Was the preacher right? ~

But at once the logical part of him took control.

~ Are you mad? ~ He asked himself. ~ It has to be a part of the rock, which crumbled to dust, nothing special and surely no magic! ~

James let this rational part of himself calm down the more primitive part of his brain, which existed already, before when the first ancestors of humanity lived under the feet of the dinosaurs.

He coughed heavily when the dust set in his nose and mouth, but despite that, the dust even so made his eyes water and made him practically blind. He left his hiding place and tried to figure out how much of the plain had been destroyed while slowly moving forward.

The darkness, which surrounded him, suddenly formed a shape in front of him, a form of darkness with large opened wings, which somehow created even more darkness as impossible as it seemed. And what he believed were eyes even shone dark in the darkness.

James fell down, stumbling over something he couldn't identify, maybe a rock or maybe a piece of wood; it didn't matter since when he looked back up the shape was gone.

~ No, it was never there. ~ He thought. ~ It was just my imagination. ~

Surely it had to be! This was no wonder, thanks to all the stories he had heard in his youth.

He stayed there, kneeled down in the darkness surrounding him and slowly the dust settled down, letting the silver light of the moon coming through, which revealed the terrifying scenery.

All the trees around him were covered with Grey dust like the ground, creating a disturbing monotone landscape in which every life seemed displaced. James noticed this, just at a distant place of his mind, since all his senses were now concentrated on the center of the dust which was still unclear. 

When the dust had finally set completely, James saw that the result of the explosion went beyond his wildest assumptions.

The plain was gone, totally and completely gone, leaving nothing but rubble where it had been before.

~ The TNT could never have done this alone. ~ James thought. ~ This is... ~

"Help!" screamed a voice and James stiffened.

The voice had been female and sounded more like a timid child than anything else.

A shock went through James's bones. He had been sure that there was no one near when he pressed the button, but he hadn't checked...

~ What if... ~ he didn't want to end this thought.

"Is someone there?" he screamed into the night, which became slowly clear again.

There was no answer, so he slowly made his way through the rubble, walking carefully until he nearly stumbled over somebody.

She sat with his back to him, trembling, her arms wrapped around her legs and trying to look as small as possible. The first thing James noticed was that she had hair as black as the night, unlike anyone in the town had.

Slowly, he went around her, seeing that she was an adolescent, maybe 17, but not older, seemingly unwounded by the explosion, which seemed a wonder. The next thing he noticed was that she wore nothing but a top and a loincloth made of old linen and the temperature was below zero now.

"Here," he said, taking his jacket off and laying it around her shoulders. "You will become sick if you run around like this."

~ At least she isn't hurt. ~ James thought.

The warmth of the jacket seemed to help her and her eyes, the color of dark-green emeralds, which were unbelievably pretty, James thought, slowly began to look at him instead of in the air.

"What are you doing here?" James asked her and when she didn't answer, he continued. "Are you alone?"

It passed some seconds and James believed that the strange woman... or rather girl, would remain silent, but then she began to speak slowly and quietly.

"My mother..." she explained "I was with my mother..."

"Do you know where she is?" James asked her unsure, somehow the woman had a dialect in her speech he couldn't identify... maybe Canadian?

"No… " She murmured "She was with me and then... I..."

She trembled again heavily and James believed to know that, despite the temperature, she was maybe suffering from shock, a heavy one.

While he thought about this, he looked around and a more terrifying thought pushed the first out of his mind.

~ What if her mother was here? ~ His eyes stayed centered on the rubble, which had once been a plain. ~ If she lies under this? ~

"Where?" he asked the girl, staring on her, "Where is she?" 

The girl just continued trembling, seemingly sunken in her own world.

James looked back on the rubble. Most of the rocks were just as large as his head, but some were large as cars and he doubted that anyone would survive if they were trapped under them.

~ Maybe the men of the town can... ~ Then it hit him. ~ They will come and when they see me and her... ~

James looked down on the black-haired girl.

"What is your name?" he asked, trying not to sound as worried as he was.

"Lu...." the girl began slowly, "Lucy."

James nodded, thinking that it was a beautiful name.

"Okay, listen Lucy, we have to go, my..." he hesitated. "My parent's house isn't far away from here, so we can go there and maybe find help." James hesitated again, noticing that she wore no boots. "Can you walk?"

The girl... Lucy nodded, trying to stand up and James helped her by taking her arm. When he did so, James noticed that her arm felt warm, not cold as he had suspected and he believed that it was even heavier than it should be, but otherwise it had already been a long night for him.

"Come on, it isn't far." he explained and led her away from the remains of the plain.

They walked deep into the wood while James took up his rucksack on the way, trying not to leave any trace... Except the large heap of rubble, which had once been the so-called 'demon's prison'.

James didn't run for once because he didn't want to exhaust his companion or the fact that he didn't know the way he was walking, but he walked fast and was lucky to see that the girl kept up. He hoped that the people of the town hadn't recovered from the shock so fast, since else they might run into them.

~ They will most likely first ask the preacher what to do? ~ James thought ~ Or they could make an assembly? ~

But he didn't know for sure and so he concentrated on what lay ahead of him, namely rocky ground with much old wood and no clear path. Wondering, he looked to his companion who, despite the fact that she had no boots or even socks, walked as fast as he did, without complaining about the little stones, which had to be picking the soles of her feet, or the cold.

~ It has to be the shock. ~ He said to himself, concentrating on the ground under his feet again.

Finally, even James couldn't say how long, they reached the town and his house at the same window where he had climbed out.

"Come, we have to go in fast," James told the girl, "else we might be discovered."

"Discovered?" the girl asked, confused. "Have we done anything wrong?"

James shook his head.

"No," he explained, trying to assure himself of it, "but the people in the town are a bit... different than the rest of the world and they might think it." 

On the questioning look of the now even more confused girl, he added. "I will explain it to you when we are in." he promised. "Now hurry."

The girl still didn't look very convinced, but then she nodded and carefully climbed through the window. It was the first time that James noticed the little bag on the girl's belt.

After he had climbed in and had closed the window, James offered Lucy with a gesture of his hand to sit down on his bed, which she accepted, seemingly gratefully.

The bed creaked very loudly under the girl's seemingly low weight and James made a mental note to later ask his father to oil it.

~ How can you think of this now? ~ A part of his brain asked while the main part of it was busy in lightening the candle. ~ Surely half the town with enough brains is out there searching for you to make a nice meal afterwards with you as the roast. ~

A part of James doubted that they would kill him for what he did, but then again the preacher had once told them how the town had killed a man 200 years ago because he had wanted to leave the community and reveal it to the world... James had little doubt that it was true.

"Listen..." he began, speaking to Lucy, who looked at him with worried eyes, but he never came to end the sentence because the door to his room opened.

James turned around in shock, half-expecting a mob to come storming through the door, wanting to lynch him for the 'sacrilege' he had committed, but it turned out just to be his mother looking on him with timid eyes.

"James! My god, I thought already..." she began speaking, until she noticed the girl on his bed. "Who is she?"

She spoke the last words in a tone of greatest mistrust, nearly fear, and James knew that his mother believed to see the demon in this girl.

~ If I can not reason with her, I even so can't with the rest of the town. ~ James thought and laid a hand on his mother's shoulder.

"Mother, this is Lucy. I discovered her at the plain...." he hesitated shortly, "after I blasted it."

All blood drained out of his mother's face and she crossed herself.

"James, you..." she began, more than terrified, but her son simply shook his head.

"No," he stopped her with a harder voice than he had intended. "Let us speak outside."

Without waiting for an answer, James turned around to Lucy who studied the scene with very intelligent green eyes, which captured him for a second. This was the exact moment when he noticed how beautiful she was.

"I have to speak with my mother." he explained. "Please try to warm yourself up, it has been very cold."

Lucy nodded unsure, pulling her legs close to her body and wrapping her arms around them until she looked like when he had first discovered her. 

~ She is not trembling anymore. ~ James noticed. ~ Neither through shock or cold. ~

But James knew he hadn't the time to care for how she felt right now. She lived and he had to take care that she would survive the rest of the night... if he could do the same?

"James, who is she?" his mother asked him when he had closed the door. 

"A girl I found at the remains of the plain. She is still under shock, but she is better than when I found her." James hesitated and clenched his hands to fists when he added "I don't know for sure, but maybe I have killed her mother."

Again the blood drained out of his mother's face, but this time she seemed more able to hold herself together.

"What if she is not who she claims to be?" his mother asked him silently, looking to the door to his room as if she feared the devil would come out of it in the next second. It was indeed near to what she believed. "What if she is the Demon? James, the demon has black hair too and Lucy, this name is..."

"It is a nice name, mother." James replied more than stressed. "And she seems a nice girl, considering what she has been through tonight."

When he saw that his mother still wasn't convinced, he added.

"Mother, have you seen any wings on her back?" he asked her. "Are her eyes burning like hellfire or did she roar like a thousand lionesses?" 

Martha Dower slowly shook her head, indeed there had been no signs of evilness on the girl, but somewhere in the back of her mind, something continued to warn her when she had looked into those green eyes.

"Please mother, I need your help," James said, stopping her thoughts, "more than ever before."

Martha Dower looked in her son's Grey eyes and sighed finally, maybe he had been right all the time.

"What can I do?" she asked calmly.

"For starters, where is father?" James asked.

"He has gone with the other men of the town." his mother answered. "They came here a few minutes after the explosion, asking us where you were, but we didn't know, so he went with them to discuss with the others what to do now. They went into the church, but I stayed in case you came back."

James nodded. He was disappointed, even when he didn't show it. If the whole town would have raced to the 'demon's prison,' he would have been able to sneak away unseen, but now it was too large a risk, especially with the girl on his side.

"Then I... we will have to stay here until the air is clean." he spoke out loud, not taking his eyes from his mother.

"I won't tell them anything." his mother promised. 

James nodded, not being able to express his thankfulness in a better way.

"Please, make her a cup of your good tea." he asked his mother. "I have to go back to her and..."

He didn't speak any further, since his mother grabbed his hands. 

"I'll make two." she told him.

James looked surprised in his mother's eyes, and then he allowed himself his first true smile for this evening.

"Thank you." he said.

His mother didn't say anything, but pulled his hands to her mouth and kissed them, before going into the kitchen.

James looked at his mother, who searched for the materials for his tea, for a short time and then turned around back to the door to his room.

"James," his mother's voice stopped him when he had already touched the knob of the door. "Think of putting out the candle, the light might attract attention."

James nodded thankfully, thinking that his mother was no doubt the most intelligent member of the family, and entered his room, closing the door behind him.

His good mood was stopped when he discovered that Lucy was kneeling before the open chest on the end of his sister's bed, seemingly searching through it.

  
"What are you doing?" James demanded to know.

His harsh tone made Lucy turn around in shock and she looked on him timidly.

"I..." she began. "I was searching for some clothes... You told me to keep myself warm, so I thought..."

She stopped, her voice trembling again.

~ Well done, ~ James rebuked himself, looking in Lucy's fearful eyes, ~ really great. ~

"I'm sorry." he told her while putting out the candle again. Luckily the moon shone fully into the room tonight. "Really! It was a long night and it is not over yet and I am... tired."

Lucy nodded slowly, turning her eyes back on the open chest.

"Whose things are these?" she asked interested.

"My sister's, but they are too small for you." he explained and then corrected himself. "They _were_ my sister's things."

There was a longer silence in which James knelt down beside Lucy, while she looked on him carefully.

"I know how it is to loose siblings." Lucy revealed sadly. "I had two younger brothers, who died much too young."

James looked surprised on the girl, who had her eyes on the contents of the chest again. 

Finally, her eyes glittered when she had found something and without asking, Lucy grabbed into the chest. She pulled out a little golden cross, which hung at a necklace and studied it with such curiosity that James believed she had never seen a cross before.

"Your family is religious?" Lucy finally asked.

James nodded.

"Deeply, yes." he replied coldly.

"My mother told me and my siblings once that humans create gods to justify their deeds and to give their useless existence a meaning." Lucy explained calmly. "You see, my family isn't very religious. They mostly believe in fairy tales, spirits and magic, but I always intended to learn more about Christianity."

"Believe me, you have missed nothing." James assured her, while he thought that this was indeed a miraculous girl. "At least, it's not practiced here."

Again Lucy looked on him with many questions in her eyes, but then she simply held the cross to him and James took it, holding it in his hand, staring on it.

"It was my sister's cross." he explained. "It was a present from me to her when I came back from a job once. She loved it more than anything else, cherished it, and I thought they would have laid it with her in the... the...." he stopped, somehow unable to continue.

Lucy looked on him with unreadable eyes and she raised her arm, touching his face. He let her do it and noticed the first time that he had actually cried. Instead of saying anything, she led her damp finger to her nose and smelled on it and finally, even licked it.

"Oh," she said with a genuine smile when she noticed his look. "Sorry, but I believe that if you smell or even taste the other's tears, the pain becomes clearer to you."

"I must look weak to you." he explained, shaking his head. "My sister died four years ago and I still cry."

"It isn't foolish to still care for the ones who are gone." Lucy said, touching his shoulder softly. "We all do in our ways."

~ A good girl indeed ~ he noticed ~ if the whole town could see... ~

James looked on the cross and an idea blinked up in his mind.

"Please, come nearer to me?" he asked her.

Lucy looked surprised on him and for a moment, James believed to see cold suspicion in her green eyes, but then she did what he had asked her.

When she was directly before him, James opened the buckle of the necklace, placed it amongst her neck and closed it. Finally, he looked smiling on her, finding that it fit very well on her.

"But it was your sister's..." Lucy asked confused.

"Yes," he explained, "but now it is yours. I know she would agree with me to give it to you."

~ And maybe the people of the town will think twice about calling you a demon when they see the cross on your breast. ~ James added mentally.

He sighed, as he knew he had to tell her the whole story if just to make her clear in what danger she was... Correction, in what danger he had brought her in.

"Come," he said, standing up to his full height. "I have to explain to you the whole situation."

Lucy stood up and James noticed the natural elegance, through which she was doing this. He led her to his bed and they both sat down.

"You surely have noticed that this town isn't like others." he began, waiting on her to answer.

She nodded slowly.

"Sure, I don't have to hide myself in other towns." she noticed. "And then there's the way your mother reacted on me."

James nodded sadly.

"Yes," he explained, "and then there's all this." 

He showed around with his hands, showing that the room like the house and the whole town were in no way comparable with the standards of the modern time.

"It is practically like the middle ages." he complained. "Even the Amish have more comfort."

"I didn't want to say anything." Lucy replied calmly.

"It is because of the legend, all this is because of it." James told her. "Once this here was a normal, prosperous town, but then something happened and a legend was born. Allegedly demons once lived here, a whole family of them up on the plain near the town. They tortured the humans in the town, but finally the humans were able to get rid of them, except one. This was a female demon with..." James hesitated shortly, looking to her, "with hair black like the night and eyes as red as the hellfire itself. She nearly killed the whole town when an angel sent by God came and defeated the demon. But the angel, a female one too, wasn't able to kill the demon so she imprisoned her in a large rock deep in the woods instead. She then gave the people in the town the holy mission to guard the demon's prison, or else the demon would free herself and bring about the end of the world."

James stopped. He had told the story, the part what mattered and now Lucy looked on him with unreadable eyes. 

"The rock you... destroyed, was the rock of the legend?" she asked and James nodded. "And your mother thought I was the demon."

James nodded again sadly.

"Now she knows you aren't," he added quickly, "but most of the people in the town aren't as sensible as my mother, my father for starters. They'll probably lynch you if we don't flee from here or are able to convince them of the fact that you are just a normal human."

Lucy stared on him, still with an unreadable expression on her face.

"See, I knew I should have been more careful before I blasted the plain, but I **had** to do something." James explained, trying to justify himself. "This town is obsessed by its 'holy mission' and caught in another time. Sometimes I believe this isn't the USA, but the last part of the old British colony as it once was." he sighed. "I had to do it for my sister... You have to know that she died of appendicitis, something every good hospital in the country could have healed with ease."

There was a longer silence, but finally Lucy nodded.

"I understand," she said, "as good as I can."

James nodded, but didn't know what else he could say.

After a while, Lucy looked curiously on the mobile TV on the other, ever empty bed. Something that James noticed at once.

"Shall I switch it on?" he asked her.

Lucy nodded calmly and James stood up, turning his back to her while working on the mobile TV.

"It is a new one, very expensive." James explained while he pushed the power-button. "I don't know why I bought it, maybe to prove to myself that there is still a world outside the town."

With this, he extended the antenna of the TV, bringing a slightly trickling picture of CNN on the screen.

"I hope this is good enough," he said, turning around to her. "I'm lucky that there is really any reception, you know it is always difficult with these in the mountains."

Lucy nodded, her eyes captured by the TV screen. 

Finally, she freed herself from it.

"My mother has no TV." she explained. "She is not interested very much in what the humans around her are doing."

"Oh." James noticed, thinking that maybe they both weren't so different after all.

"She isn't strange," Lucy assured, "but she has been disappointed by humanity very often and fought in too many wars."

The girl remained silent a moment and James thought that her mother must be an interesting person, as her daughter.

"She even so trains me so that I'm able to defend myself, this week it is survival training." Lucy added as irrelevant fact.

"What?" James asked her unbelieving.

"Do you think this is the way I usually clothe myself?" she asked him with a slight smile, pointing to her top and her loincloth.

James shook his head, in all the trouble he had forgotten this again.

"But I think I'll always disappoint her." she explained. "I'm back in my lessons and somehow can't really fulfil her expectations."

"No," James denied. "I don't think that you could disappoint anyone."

"I heard her say that my love was better than I." she explained. "But one day I will make her proud." 

"Sure you will or even have...." he stopped. "…Your love?"

Lucy smiled, going with her hand through her black hair.

"Yes, we practically grew up together." she told James. "I wanted to mat... _marry_ him some time, but... his heart stopped beating for me."

James nodded understanding; this was when he began to see the 'girl' in another way.

"How old are you?" he asked her.

"Older than the most humans think." she replied smiling.

He wanted to ask further, but was stopped when Lucy suddenly began to laugh rich and genuine.

"What is it?" he asked, becoming infected by her laughter.

"I still don't know your name." she noticed smiling.

James grinned, he had indeed forgotten to say it.

"James Dower." he explained. "And you? I mean your full name."

"Lucy Canmore." Lucy replied after a second.

"Canmore..." James repeated. "Sounds Scottish."

"It is." she assured him. "My mother came from Scotland, it was here where she met my father."

"Well..." he began, but stopped when the door opened and his mother came in, with two cups of her special tea on the tablet she was carrying in front of her.

"I didn't want to interrupt you both." James's mother said, even sounding so.

"It is okay, mother," James replied, "we were just talking."

His mother nodded and was going to say something more, when they heard the front door open.

"I'll come at once." His father's voice told someone outside the door, to be followed by footsteps moving in the direction of James's room.

James didn't wait, but went out of the room, meeting his father half of the way between the two doors. 

"What...." his father began, looking on his son as if he would see a ghost.

"What have you done?" his father asked him and his voice was a chaos of different emotions like surprise, fear, suspicion, but even so relief about seeing his son again.

"I blew up the rock in the wood." James explained, confirming his father's fears. "The 'demon's prison' is no more and look, the world hasn't gone under."

His father seemed to sway, knowing that his son spoke the truth.

"James, you...." he choked. 

"Father, we don't have time for this." his son pleaded. "I nearly killed a young woman tonight who was at the plain and if the preacher finds her, he might really kill her."

"A woman?" his father asked, now suspicious again.

"She isn't the demon, Abe. She wears Maria's cross and no demon could do so." Martha told her husband, "I have come to believe that there never was one."

James's father looked on both his son and his wife, the two humans that meant everything to him.

"The preacher said we should call him when we see you." he explained slowly and James knew that he was fighting with himself, trying to decide between what he had believed all his life and the loyalty to his son.

"Father please, I ask you," James began and his voice was indeed pleading and desperate, "just this time, trust me more than the preacher or any old story written in a book."

James's father looked in his son's eyes, which were so much like his own, unknowing what to do.

"Abe, we have to go!" a voice screamed from outside. "The preacher wants us to be at the demon's prison as fast as possible."

James's father's eyes stayed captured on his son, looking sad and for one moment, James believed he would call the man in, capturing him and send him before the preacher to judge him.

"I'll come." Abe replied to the voice outside "I'm just catching my jacket."

While he answered, he never took his eyes from his son's eyes.

"Practically all men are going to the plain." he explained. "The rest are with their families, so you can sneak away. Wait some minutes, then use the way behind the house leading to the road and be careful."

"Thank you, father..." James began, but his father shook his head.

"Just be careful and don't come back so soon." he explained and added silently. "I love you."

James nodded sadly, as he knew he would maybe not be able to return here for years until the town had calmed down.

Without turning around or saying anything more, James's father grabbed his jacket and stormed out of the door, closing it behind him.

James's mother looked on the scene with mixed feelings, as it seemed as if her husband and her son had reconciled, but despite this, their son would leave her again.

"I'll make you something to eat for the way." she offered with a smile and went into the kitchen before her son could say anything or even notice the tears forming in her eyes.

James didn't say anything, he didn't know what, but while he went back into his room he swore to find a fitting way to say goodbye soon.

When he entered his room, he noticed that Lucy still sat as he had left her, sipping on her tea. 

"Is everything well?" she asked James with her eyes studying him intensely. "I heard a man speaking... Was it your father?"

James nodded.

"Yes, he will cover us." he explained. "But we will have to flee soon, as long as most of the men are occupied at the remains of the plain." he hesitated, studying her still few clothing. "Best I'll give you some of my old clothes... if mom kept them."

"Thank you." Lucy replied. "But why don't you drink your tea first? It is becoming cold."

James looked at the tea standing on the desk before him.

"You're right." he explained and took the cup in his hand. "Besides, I haven't relished anything warm since ages."

He began sipping on the tea. Sensing that it wasn't hot anymore, he drunk the whole cup in a row.

~ It is sweet. ~ He noticed ~ mother must have used her last sugar for it. ~

Just that moment, he felt himself becoming dizzy and sleepy.

"Uhh." he stated and felt his legs becoming weak. 

But Lucy was indeed very fast and grabbed him under his arms, leading him to his bed.

"You must be tired," she said smiling and if James had been in a better state, he would have noticed that the smile didn't mean anything good. "Sleep."

James wanted to say something… that they hadn't enough time and that they had to hurry, but he couldn't even move his mouth when his world became black.

****

11.01.1992; 10:27; the Dower's house:

Slowly, the curtain of slumber fell from James's mind and his slowly awakening senses told his brain that it was already morning. 

~ I have to go to work. ~ He thought. ~ If they notice that I'm late... ~

But then his brain informed him that he was, first, not in his usual bed and then that he had more reason to worry than just possible trouble with his boss.

"Shit!" he cursed and jumped out of the bed, looking around for an angry mob wanting his head, or at least two powerful guardians, taking care that he wouldn't be able to flee.

The room however was empty.

"It is okay, James." Lucy's voice spoke to him from the main room, screaming through the door, which was just leaned open. "We are here in the kitchen."

"Lucy?" he asked the girl... even when he had the suspicion that it was better to call her woman, based on the history of her life. "What..."

When he opened the door, he saw his parents sitting with their backs to him. Lucy meanwhile was, still with his sister's necklace around her neck, studying the mobile TV on the table, which she had somehow got without paying James a look.

"Oh, everything is okay." she explained, smiling without turning her head from the TV. "After you had fallen asleep, I was able to speak with the preacher and the rest of the town. I convinced them that any violence is senseless and that you had proven the truth by blasting up the plain."

James stared on her in wonder. This couldn't be true!

"Mom?" he finally asked them, but they were somehow, oddly, not moving. "Father?"

Still the figures didn't move and when James had got far enough to see their fronts, he realized why, even when he didn't want to.

The eyes of his dead parents looked on him.

Well, there would be if there were still things like eyes in what had once been their faces. There were no noses, no lips and it seemed as if large claws had gone through it. 

But they had been killed just by the holes in their stomachs and just from the looks in their eyes, James knew that they had died slowly.

The pure horror let him stumble backwards and fell down on his rear.

"Aghrhhhhh..." he wanted to scream, but his lungs didn't obey him, so it was just a whistling which emitted from his mouth.

"Oh, I forgot to thank you." Lucy explained without looking away from the TV. "Without you, I possibly would have been trapped in that damned rock forever."

With this, James saw Lucy extending her.... Wings? 

The extended wings destroyed the illusion completely and instead of a woman, now a demon, a real demon sat on the chair in front of him.

~ My God, they were right! ~ James thought, not even feeling panic, but total and complete surprise. ~ I... ~

"Thank you, even for showing me a bit of this New World. USA? Nice name!" the demon explained. "I made a little present to show my gratitude."

"Wh...." James began, but never got the chance to end his question, since he saw the front door slowly opening. 

Finally, the door was opened completely, revealing a figure at the entrance, whose details James couldn't recognize at once since the incoming light dazzled him. Then he realized what stood in front of him and began to scream, believing to hear something snap in his brain.

"Brother... " The creature greeted with false love.

Lucifia smiled and didn't even turn her head on James's screams.

~ Mother is wrong. ~ She thought. ~ Humans _are_ useful, sometimes. ~

"By the way," Lucifia asked herself. "Where am I going to find you?"

".... _and now, the new crime-rates for Los Angeles_..." a commentator on the TV said, which made the demon smile.

"Los Angeles?" she asked the commentator. "Let's see, _nomen est omen_."


	5. Epilog

****

somewhere somewhen

Lucifia thought about these memories without any emotions, which was odd since she had amused herself a lot back then, considering that it was the most and only fun she had had for 300 years.

Then she felt the memories of her arrival in Los Angeles begin, thinking that would definitely be the most fun... Unfortunately, this was the time when she felt her soul being pulled to somewhere.

In the end it wasn't a draft anymore, but she felt herself falling.

****

03.08.98; 06:02; somewhere:

A brain started to work the first time and slowly, a pair of eyes opened to see for the first time.

~ Where? ~

The being looked around, seeing and beginning to feel that she was surrounded by water, or at least some water-like liquid, which she could breath like air.

Slowly, the memories returned and she realized where she was, which was the time when the liquid, she felt herself floating in with her black hair swimming before her, became fewer and fewer, until she just stood on two muscular legs that had never stood before.

The clone looked around, when the transparent tube around her became lifted up by the same mechanism, which had pumped away the liquid that had nourished her during her growth, and coughed, cleaning her respiratory tract of the liquid.

When she had managed this, she smiled.

~ I'm a clone ~ Lucifia thought ~ and such my soul has escaped death. ~

Still smiling, Lucifia jumped from the height of the clone-tube down onto the earth, landing on all fours since her senses were still untrained in this new, still completely naked, body. 

~ Mother would criticize me ~ she thought when she stood up and looked around. ~ I wonder what her face will look like when she realizes that I'm alive. ~

Strangely, she didn't know how she had done this anymore, but she guessed that it had to do something with the stone, printed with runes that she saw still lying in the clone tube.

And with the three dead bodies that were lying on three stretchers, bled dry, with their blood forming a circle around the empty clone tube. Lucifia remembered that she had captured the three beggars from the streets, knowing that no one would care for their disappearance and more so that the humans would be relaxed of not seeing them anymore. 

With a special medicine, she had made it unable for them to move any muscle or to say anything, so they had been at her mercy. Then she had explained to them what she would do with them; just to see the terror in their eyes before she had installed the machine, which cut their throats when the countdown wouldn't be stopped in time. 

Lucifia remembered how funny it had been to mock them by renewing the countdown, for which the timer she had naturally placed just so that the three humans could see it, just in the last second.

She remembered this, but somehow she didn't feel the same amusement by this, as if something was missing.

Unsure, she walked to the corner of this large room where she had placed some of the useful material she had 'gained' during the years. There, behind a desk full of material useful for both, shamanism and magic, were two green eyes looking on her in wonder.

Lucifia stopped in shock when she realized that it was she, herself who looked on her through the mirror, showing her like she hadn't been for more than 300 years. 

"No... " she whispered denying, but then a part of her realized what had happened. 

She had lost the part of the darkness in her soul that she had once took with herself when she came from the world of limbo and naturally she had even so lost her old, nearly invincible body in the Eyrie tower... What her mother had done with it?

~ Oh yes, mother! ~ Lucifia thought smiling and switched the little mobile TV on, which seemed somehow displaced amongst all the occult things on the desk.

It didn't matter what television program she switched on, because on everyone the human reporters either retold the story of the cruel massacre done by a demonic monster or... 

Lucifia stopped when she realized that there was her mother, being led away by some police officers, one of them Elisa Maza. At first she was perplexed, but then she realized what was going on.

"Are you playing the martyr, mother?" she asked the TV. "It doesn't fit to you."

Then she saw her mother hit by a stone, how she stumbled and nearly fell down and a part in Lucifia winced... This didn't feel good.

Confused, she looked on the TV as if a claw had come out of it and had hit her.

Suddenly she screamed up, her eyes blazing red and she threw the whole TV on the earth, shattering it into dozens of pieces of glass and metal.

~ What has happened to me? ~ Lucifia asked herself angrily. ~ I should be happy about this! I have humiliated her and shown her what I'm capable of. So why don't I feel better? ~

Deep down she knew the answer. She had lost the darkness and such her goal and being... But she would demand it back.

Hastily she searched the corner until she found the dried leaves she needed. Thus she placed them in an iron-bowl and sat herself in front of it.

~ Okay, what now? ~ She asked herself, even when she knew it.

The loss of the darkness inside of her had even so made her forget most of the knowledge it had brought. For example, she didn't even know how she had exactly brought her soul back to the world of the living, but bringing herself to the world of limbo was basic, all she needed was fire.

~ Damn! ~ 

Lucifia knew that her father would have been able to summon fire, simply by asking the spirits, but she wasn't able to do so. She had neither his equipment, which she had placed in another place to hide.

~ A world for matches, ~ Lucifia thought, feeling not amused that all her plans might fail because she lacked the ability that humans had gained thousands of years ago.

~ But are these plans worth it? ~ A part in her mind asked her and Lucifia had to fight hard to stop it.

She reminded herself of the spell her mother had taught her once to make fire and grinned.

"LUMINATI!" She ordered the contents of the bowl.

It remained, as it was, as if nothing had happened.

~ Damn! ~ Lucifia thought and a part of her shivered. 

"LUMINATI!!!" she screamed again, this time louder and definitely more desperate.

The leaves were still seemingly unimpressed.

The desperation in Lucifia grew with every second, she had once heard that few, very good shamans had once been able to travel between the worlds even without such tools, but she _was_ no good shaman, she even hadn't been just a good apprentice, so this was hopeless.

~ This proves it. ~ Lucifia thought. ~ Without the darkness, I can't even manage such a simple spell, no wonder that mother thinks that I'm worthless. ~

The young and still naked gargoyle swallowed and extended her claw, forming it in the way her mother had taught her when she had spoken the spell for the first time. 

"Luminati." Lucifia spoke again, this time calm and nearly quiet. 

A flame reached out of the bowl and the leaves were slowly consumed by it.

The young gargoyle grinned, while she let the well-smelling scent of the burning leaves carry her away into another world, maybe she wasn't so useless after all.

The world of cold stone and steel faded away and revealed a world so much different of what Lucifia had learned to know in the last years. It made her wonder that she was at the same place, as it had been when she had made the first voyage to this place, even the fire burned as if she had just left it.

Wondering, Lucifia looked around, studying the trees with it, seeing the distant mountains. At the same time she noticed that she wasn't naked anymore, but wore the same type of top and loincloth she had worn before she had learned of the advantages of leathers.

~ Is the world a single repetition? ~ Lucifia asked herself, but then rebuked herself for delaying what had to be done.

With secure steps and now, unlike the first time, not fearing what might come, Lucifia walked quickly up the way, remembering the first time as if just seconds, not centuries had passed. Back then she had feared the darkness on the way, now she was part of it. 

She felt being watched, but the creatures living in the forest didn't come out.

~ They fear me! ~ Lucifia realized with a smile, ~ and they have good reason to! ~

Still smiling, Lucifia entered the clearing, but her smile faded when she realized that she wasn't alone.

A figure stood in the shadows of the trees, studying the newly arrived gargoyle intensively. 

"Who is there?" Lucifia asked, even when she believed to know it.

But it wasn't the double of her mother who came out of the shadows.

"Hello, Little Panther." the gargoyle that she knew as 'Shaman' or 'Leader' greeted, his brown eyes still directed on her.

She knew that it was he and no new form that the darkness had chosen to speak with her, not just his eyes, but the soul she recognized in them showed her the truth.

"Father...." Lucifia whispered.

Shaman nodded.

"If you want to call me so." he replied.

Lucifia continued to look on him, unbelieving for a second, then she captured herself.

"I thought you would be at the other side." she told him. "Playing a harp on a cloud to speak in primitive human terms or being together with the rest of our clan."

"I was." Shaman replied, now walking closer to his daughter until he stood directly in front of her and they were both close to the little lake. "But some powers allowed me to come back to this place."

"Oh yes, naturally." Lucifia noticed. "The beings beyond this sphere are such worried about what I plan that they decided to send you to stop me.... I'm honored."

"No," Shaman explained, shaking his beaked head. "Not to stop you, but the darkness so that it doesn't claim your soul any longer."

His daughter laughed.

"This is good, Shaman." she told him, addressing him by his name, or better the title he had worn as long that it had become his name. "But they forgot that I **AM** the darkness. I chose it by my own free will and all that I did, I have done by my own free will."

"No," her father replied softly and his eyes glittered with love. "I know you were tricked, I saw it and was unable to do anything and I even so know that all you did since this time, you did because the darkness let you do it."

Lucifia eyed him angrily, but then an idea hit her mind and she reached ahead with her claw to his face... and went through it like air, proofing that Shaman did not fully exist, even in a world that was populated by spirits.

"HA! They should have sent someone with more consistency." Lucifia noticed with a smile. "You can not stop me." 

"As I said, I'm not here to stop you but the darkness," he said, "I won't attack you."

"Oh, you really think I would drop my being just because you ask me of it?" Lucifia asked him, smiling evilly. "You are a fool!"

Shaman shook his head.

"Not for me, but for you and..." he stopped, pointing to the lake, "…for her."

Lucifia didn't want to look at the lake since she knew what she would see, but the same curiosity which had brought her much trouble in the past, already made her eyes wander to this place, nearly against her will.

~ This world is full of repetitions ~ Lucifia thought sarcastically when she saw what she had expected.

The lake had become a gate to the world of living once more, but instead of angry humans it now showed her mother, sitting on a cell-bench with her legs near her body and her wings covering her whole body. Despite her fast healing rate, she was still pretty much in a miserable state since her shoulder, like her wing, seemed still broken.

Lucifia couldn't see her mother's face since she had laid it on her knees, but then her mother looked up for some reason. Even when a part in Little Panther's brain told her that her mother had to look to something in the cell, she felt as if her mother would look directly into her eyes. 

Her mother's eyes were cold and full of pain, pain she had suffered in this night.

~ Pain I have caused her... ~ Lucifia realized and her heart screamed up in pain.

She fell backward, landing on her back and crawled away from the lake and its terrible content. 

Her father said something, but Lucifia didn't hear it, didn't want to hear it, since she had jumped up and ran up the dark way that she knew would lead her to new security, to liberty from these feelings as fast as her four limbs could carry her.

When she finally reached the place where just solemn death trees guarded the way, she breathed heavily, but had to notice that she hadn't been fast enough.

"Do you run away from the image of your mother… or yourself?" Shaman asked, leaning on a wall.

He asked this without cynicism, without trying to make fun on her, just with honest concern and love in his voice and eyes. Such he proofed that he wasn't like the image of her mother had been... He was worse.

"I just made my decision." Lucifia replied coldly, even when a growing part in her simply wanted to break down screaming and slowly walk further to the source of the darkness, which a part of her heart called for. "Besides, she doesn't matter to me. She thinks I am worthless... all my power is darkness." 

Shaman shook his head and his beak seemed to glow in the darkness, as seemed his necklace with the image of his companion.

"This isn't true." he replied. "Your mother has always been proud on you."

Lucifia stopped shortly, looking in her father's eyes confused, but then she shook her head, remembering what she had heard back then when her mother and father had spoken to each other.

~ _*She is back in her warrior lessons and the learning of magic and even her skills in the art of shamanism are a bit backward compared to her brothers...* _~

"You lie." Lucifia explained icily. She had just reached the border to the crater on which, on the ground, she saw the dark liquid that was the essence of darkness itself, shimmering tempting on the ground. "And even if not, there is no way back, not after what I have done... I killed them all."

With this, Lucifia began her way down into the crater.

"There is still your mother." Shaman replied, he stood at the border of the crater, unable or unwilling to come nearer to the dark sea. "She loves you."

"SHE HATES ME!" Lucifia screamed on him, now standing directly in front of the lake, but her head turned back to her father.

"No," Shaman told her "She doesn't, she couldn't."

"I killed our clan." Lucifia replied with her voice now weak and tears were threatening to leave her eyes. "She can't forgive me for this... or you."

With this, Lucifia turned away from her father, kneeling down to the lake.

"She has already in the moment she learned of it." Shaman told his daughter "As has I, the clan... and Wolf."

Lucifia stiffened when the memories of her lost love came to her mind, all the nights they had shared repeated in her mind.

Tears dropped in the black liquid.

"The pain you saw in your mother's eyes wasn't because of the humans you killed, or the injuries she had to suffer..." Shaman explained, looking on his daughter's back. "She is in pain because she believes to have lost **you**."

He stopped.

"If you are truly sorry," he began, "if you truly want to make things better, then come back with me and go to your mother. She wants you... She **needs** you, more than you might ever realize."

His daughter stared ahead and even Shaman didn't know what she thought.

Lucifia finally raised her head, very slowly and very cautiously, turning to her father.

Her eyes, so full of pain and tears looked on him and Shaman knew that he had won and that his love would have his daughter back, but suddenly the look in Lucifia's eyes changed and she looked in horror down on her left leg. Shaman followed her eyes and if he were to still have possessed a heart, it would have frozen at this moment.

A tentacle had come out of the sea of darkness and winded around his daughter's left leg's ankle. 

The tentacle pulled and let Lucifia fall hard on her stomach, but she fought, making her father proud by trying to crape the tentacle of her ankle. Unfortunately the dark liquid didn't want to let her go and pulled her deeper and deeper in the sea. 

When her knees had vanished in the darkness, Lucifia turned to her father, her eyes full of tears and her eyes, a single mask of fear and pain. Strangely she remembered Shaman of when she had been just 5 in human terms and had woken up from a daymare. Back then, a rookery mother had comforted her, calmed her down by saying her that it was just a dream and nothing bad had happened.

But Shaman, like his daughter, knew that the daymare was real and that it wouldn't end possibly until the end of time itself.

"Father..." she screamed on him, her voice that of a little hatchling while her breast was drawn into the darkness.

"I'm sorry..." Shaman replied, sad beyond words, while his daughter's face dipped into the dark liquid. "I'm so sorry..."

There he stayed, at the crater of the darkness, which had completely consumed his daughter and any creature that would have watched the scene, would have learned that even ghosts could cry.

****

03.08.98; 07:56; somewhere:

Lucifia's eyes became clear once more. When they once again began to see the world of living, they shone black even in the darkness, which surrounded her.

She smiled evilly.

~ You nearly would have got me, father. ~ She thought. ~ But I'm back! ~

Realising that dawn was near, Lucifia stood up, stretching her muscles, naked again.

There were a lot things to be done and even more to be planned. First she had to gain immortality and power once again and for that she needed an egg, but luckily the Manhattan-clan had a practically unguarded rookery.

Then she had to plan how to tell her mother of her rising from the death.

"This will be fun!" Lucifia told herself when an idea crossed her mind and the sun turned her to stone with an evil grin on her face.

****

To be continued... 


End file.
